by Peter Hartz
“Don’t feel bad about what happened to them, but about what the actions cost the good person that had to do it to survive.” He was speaking carefully, trying to keep the girl from indicting herself for the crime. Then he realized something, and looked up at the camera. “Shut down the system in this room. Delete the files, on my authorization. This is critical.”
The red light on the camera blinked three times then went out, and he nodded.
“Svetlana, nothing will happen to you. You are the daughter of a Significant Person in the Ukraine, and as such, it is my duty to make sure you get home safely. Nothing more. What happened to those men will not be determined, and that is how it will stay. Do you understand?”
She looked at him with wide eyes, grateful for his compassion, and nodded quickly.
“Thank you very much, Captain!”
“You are very welcome, child. It is the least I can do, and they had it coming. We discovered evidence of, well, let’s just say not everyone made it out after they were taken there.”
Svetlana shuddered, and tightened her arms around Oksana, causing a gasp of pain. “Sorry,” she said, loosening her grip, but not letting go.
Svetlana’s father Borysko Yevtukh bounded out of the cab and headed up the stairs, his mind an exulted whirl. His beloved Little Sveta was inside! She was so close! It had been almost five weeks since his shining, perfect daughter had been savagely ripped away from her family. The grief had been overwhelming to him, his wife, and his son. His wife had taken it especially hard; understandably. They had been especially close, mother and daughter. But he had kept the pain of his monumental loss inside, and used it to keep his focus on finding her.
The time he had spent in Georgia looking for his daughter had been frustrating in the extreme. Away from his home country, and the resources he took for granted there, he’d been worse than ineffective, flailing about without a clue as to what to do. He’d spoke with every police officer he could, including the captain of this precinct station, until he’d been certain he’d made a pest of himself. The captain assured him that he understood, and personally made arrangements for him to stay in a hotel at their expense, but the week he’d been there had been less than fruitful.
So, with a heavy heart, he’d returned home to the Ukraine, and a job he could barely do, all the while wondering if he’d see his little Sveta again. When he returned to Ukraine without their daughter, his wife had broken down, clearly believing they would not see their daughter again, but he never gave up hope. He never shed a tear, not even in private.
Now, with the phone call earlier today, the inky black darkness that had washed the colors out of his entire family’s life seemed to vanish. His wife had been speechless in her joy and tears as he recounted the conversation, then she’d sunk to the floor, overcome with emotion. He’d held her long enough to make sure she was ok, then started making calls while he threw together a quick bag of clothing for his daughter and some things he would need for a quick flight, arranged by the Ukrainian Consulate in Tbilisi.
He was so close! His path carried him up the front steps of the building, and his trained eyes latched on to someone that was looking at him with a strange intensity. Then he saw the gun in the man’s hand as he stood in Borysko’s path to the front door.
A spike of pure torment slammed into him even as he thrust himself aside and down. Three more shots rang out, passing through the air where he had just stood, before the two officers standing outside waiting for him wrestled the gun away from the man and threw him bodily into the wall, temporarily stopping his efforts.
Borysko gasped in pain as he realized he was shot in the side. He didn’t think it was serious, but it still hurt worse than anything else he had ever experienced. A small part of him thought he was lucky his assailant was such a terrible shot, but his mind was suddenly fixated on the sound of glass breaking above them in the building, followed by broken glass and what must have been the remains of a window frame raining down onto the sidewalk between him and the door. Then something else happened.
A huge winged form landed on the sidewalk between him and the man struggling with the two Georgian police officers. It was shaped roughly like a human, but it was a black-green color, covered in scaly skin, with two huge wings that sprouted from its upper back. And it was massive. It looked to be two meters tall or more, and from the side, the horrifying visage looked enraged. Through his pain, he realized that this is what had killed the men in the brothel where he’d gone when trying to find Svetlana those weeks ago.
The creature watched for an instant as the man who had shot him stared back in stunned paralysis, and then it threw back its head, opened its mouth, and roared, a sound that was so loud everyone’s ears rang. In an instant, it stepped forward and grabbed the man that had shot Borysko, hoisting him easily up into the air. He was convinced that for some reason it was going to demonstrate what it had done to the men in the brothel, but instead, something else happened.
“Why did you shoot my father?!? WHY?” The sound of its voice was a deep rumbling bass that seemed to be made of stone, but then the words registered. ...father? Then that meant… was that Svetlana? Was SVETLANA the creature that killed those men? That would explain why they didn’t find her or her body in that horrible place, but how did she become this? What happened to her?
Answers to those questions weren’t forthcoming, but the answer to Svetlana’s question was.
“He is Special Group Alpha! He killed my Chechen brothers, him and his kind!” The words came out between gasps of pain and fear as the shooter stared into the eyes of his death, certain that he would be joining his fellow freedom fighters.
“So I was taken to bring him here for you to shoot him?” The words came out flat, almost emotionless, but there was still that edge of elemental fury about them.
“You? Who are you?” Confusion warred with fear on the man’s face as he wondered what this creature was. The question made no sense to him, at first. Then, everything changed.
The huge beast threw him to the sidewalk, where he landed hard on his back and hit his head, the wind knocked out of him, but somehow his line of sight stayed on the beast. And while he watched, it flashed into the form of the target’s daughter. He was so stunned and frightened by the happening that he lost control of his bladder as the girl darted forward.
“He is my father! I am SVELTANA YEVTUKH! I was taken from my family weeks ago! And you shot him!” He flinched back as the sheer volume of the girl’s magically enhanced voice impacted on his ears like a gunshot.
Borysko suddenly saw his daughter in front of him, and nothing mattered. He started to pull himself across the concrete to her, but the pain was making his vision cloudy. One of the officers was already on the radio demanding an ambulance to get him help, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was his little Sveta was here. The rest could wait, everything else in the entire universe could wait until later; like how she could do those things.
Svetlana flashed back to her gargoyle form again, and lifted the now screaming man off the concrete landing in front of the police station entrance, as her claws, harder than obsidian and razor sharp, dug into his skin through his leather jacket as she lifted him off the ground once again.
“So everything I have suffered these last weeks has all been so you could kill my father?” The face in front of him nodded yes frantically, and the man shrieked in pain as the talons tightened again, but the door burst open, and Borysko saw a man in the uniform of a city police captain come through them, running right up to his daughter, and hold his hands out to try to calm her down.
“It will be ok, Svetlana. Let him down. You got him. Don’t let anything else be on your hands. Think of your father! He is right there! Go to him, and let us deal with this piece of garbage. Please!”
The face darted towards the captain then the massively muscled shoulders seemed to sag. The Chechen was thrust at the captain, and he caught the suddenly free man, forcing him to the gr
ound and holding out his hand to the police officer next to him for handcuffs, which quickly appeared. He cuffed the man almost by muscle memory alone, watching father and daughter to see what happened next.
Svetlana stood with her back to her father for a moment, as if not daring to turn and see if it were really him, then she changed back to her human form, and looked fearfully over her shoulder, as if dreading what she would see.
But all she saw was her father laying on the cement steps, one hand covered in blood holding his lower side, the other reaching out to her, a look of yearning on his face, along with the utter desperation and the minute spark of hope of a man dying of thirst reaching for water.
Her world dissolved into tears as she ran to him, her beloved father, and he gasped in pain as she crashed into him, holding on to him tightly. He wrapped his free hand around her and pulled her tight to him, even as the pain made him light headed, and for a moment, they just held each other. Then she pulled back and gasped at the sight of blood leaking from him.
“Papa! You’re shot! No! I thought he missed you! No!” she wailed, “I won’t lose you again! Papa!”
“It’s ok, Sveta. I love you. I’m not going anywhere. It hurts, but I think I will be ok.”
Svetlana blinked away the tears, and suddenly her memories flashed back to that first night after she’d gotten free. A plain, non-descript man with a kindly smile had met her in a meadow, and offered to teach her how to “do more, so much more.” But she’d been fearful, and it had been too soon after the incident, and her dreams had collapsed into nightmares, like so many times since. He’d appeared time and again, trying to help her through the worst of the horrors her mind threw at her night after night, but she’d never taken him up on his offer to teach her. Now she wished she had.
She suddenly heard the voice of that man from her dreams, and gasped at what he was saying. Then she reached inside to where she found the hot stream, taking some of it inside her, and shaping it into a green light, which flared out of her hands. She looked at her father, and at his wound, and the green light flashed from her to wash over her father from head to toe. It flared for several seconds as it connected father and daughter, then it pulled back to her hands.
Borysko gasped as the pain abruptly vanished. More questions for his amazing daughter came to him, but she stood and walked to the two police officers that had initially struggled with the Chechen man that had shot her father. Both were sore and hurt from the brief confrontation, but she didn’t give them a moment to consider before the light flared from her hands, bathing them from head to toe in its healing energies. Then the light went away, and she spoke briefly.
“Thank you.”
Before they could anything but stare at her, she turned and ran back to her father, who was now on his feet, and wrapped her arms around him, holding on for dear life.
He winced at her strength, and she lightened up her hold at his sound of pain. The green light flared from her again, and the rib she’d just cracked healed as if it were never injured. Then she looked up at her beloved father, and tears fell like rain. Her nightmare was almost over. She was almost back where she belonged, and if they weren’t back in the Ukraine again, at least she was with family.
He looked down at her, a million questions burning through his brain. Thoughts of what she was capable of doing, both in healing his gunshot wound, to changing into that incredible form, danced and capered through his consciousness. He knew that he had finally found his beloved daughter again, and that he had to get her out of Georgia and back to the Ukraine as soon as possible. Everything else about her could wait. But time was against them, and he knew it. He had to get them moving, back into the car below, out to the waiting plane, and back to his home country, where he had the resources to protect her and keep her safe once more.
But the only thing that came out of his mouth was, “My beloved little Sveta! Oh how I have missed you, my girl!” And his sight blurred completely as his tears came at last, and the reunited father and daughter simply held each other in a city thousands of kilometers from home in the foreign country that had become the place they found one another again, both weeping as the reunion they both craved nearly more than life itself finally happened.
Chapter 31
Senator Robert Del Monico was a very important man. It said so on his door. He was a U.S. Senator. That made him important. And important men didn’t waste any time on the fools and idiots that were always around, asking for things. So he’d been prepared to tell his secretary to tell the latest idiot that showed up at his Washington D.C. office looking for a meeting without an appointment to take a flying leap, when he paused.
“What did he say his name was again?”
“He said his name is David Wilhelm, sir.” He paused as the name registered. Did Wilhelm know his connection to what had happened so far? Did he have any idea what was supposed to happen? The last thing Del Monico knew, the team leader on loan from the black-ops section of the Pentagon had reported that Michelle was dead, and they were set for stage two, waiting for David to show up. Since then, they’d heard exactly nothing. Now David Wilhelm was in his outer office, asking to speak with him privately. What the hell did he do now?
“I’m tied up at the moment. I have no idea when I will be available. If he wants to wait around, it may be hours. Tell him that.” He held his breath as he waited to see what happened.
“He said he will be more than happy to wait, sir.” The smooth voice of his very lovely secretary came back entirely professional and calm, a soothing presence on the other end of the line that he found he really appreciated at the moment.
“Thank you, Kira.” He hung up, then stood suddenly to pace. A moment later, inspiration struck, and he picked up his cell phone, dialing a number in his contact list.
“What is it?” Her voice always grated on him, usually so full of impatience that seemed to be more pronounced in the last several weeks as their plan had come apart.
“He’s in my office,” he blurted out.
“Who’s in your office? What the hell are you talking about?”
“David Wilhelm is in my office. He’s here. What do I do?”
“He is in right now with you? Listening to you babble at me? You fucking idiot! What the hell is wrong with you?” Contempt lashed at him through the line, and he winced. He was a fucking U.S. Senator, not some stupid middle-school idiot that she could just bully into giving up his lunch-money! The thought died inside before it made it all the way out his mouth this time. Instead, something else almost as bad came out.
“No, you fucking bitch, he’s out with my secretary, asking to see me, fuck you very much!” He returned her contempt on a platter with a side of disgust.
“Shut your mouth, you little shit. If it weren’t for you screwing the pooch on this, we’d already have achieved what we wanted, and this whole situation would be on cruise-control heading off into the sunset. Instead we have no idea where they are, and what is going on. So here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to wait there, and I am going to send Arnold over. He will come up the back way into your office, and you will invite Wilhelm in. Geoff will wait outside in the hallway with the security team, and at the right time, you will call them in to your office. Arnold will ‘witness’ David attacking you, and Geoff and the security team will take him away. We can get this whole shit-pile back on track and still get what we want. But if you fuck this up, I swear I will feed you to my pigs. Got it?”
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he suddenly realized that he was about to be exposed to potential violence.
“But what if he actually attacks me? He has to know that someone made a play on his sister. He’s a retired Marine. He could really fuck me up! I read his file, what we could get of it.”
She laughed at him. “Why do you think Arnold is going to be there? Arnold can handle one stupid Marine. Arnold is a decorated retired Navy Seal, if you recall. You’ll be fine. And who knows, if you get slapped around
and live to tell about it, maybe you’ll finally grow a set of balls and be worth a damn. Now wait for Arnold and the team, and get this right. Got it?” She seemed to be awfully fond of those last two words, he thought bitterly.
“I got it, you pathetic waste of organic material,” he rejoined in a pleasant, conversational tone of voice. Then he signed off with a cheery, “G.F.Y, you P.O.S,” certain she knew the reference, and hung up the phone.
David waited cheerfully, talking on the phone in the Elven tongue with Nate. He was certain he was being recorded, both video and audio, and hoped that the strange language was giving whoever was watching some severe fits. He occasionally smiled at the secretary, who smiled back in a perfectly professional way. Giltreas whispered in his ear that he heard someone enter the office beyond the secretary, and he heard some others moving up the hallway outside. From the sounds of them, they were heavily armed. David nodded with a smile again. It didn’t matter. They weren’t there to question the Honorable Senator from Missouri in his office. That would happen elsewhere. By the time they got into the office, the Senator, and whoever else was in there with him, would be long gone.
It had taken a lot of careful consideration and planning on how to pull this off. People on two planes had been alerted that morning that the plan was in motion. Everyone knew their role, not that it would be all that complicated unless things went wrong, but everything they could think of had been planned for. Nate had been a valued asset in that. He had a real knack for small-unit military tactics and strategies that were easily adapted to this situation, and had put together a simple but effective way to get what they wanted. Now if everyone and everything cooperated, no one would get hurt. And if someone didn’t cooperate, well, Allison was standing by, at her request. She wanted to try out the healing spell she had been working on diligently. And if anyone got dead, Giltreas was at the ready as well.