by Chris Mooney
Her stomach lurched and she looked away, across the room at the perfect blue afternoon sky lying beyond the windows and French doors. A man with thinning hair and wearing dress pants and a blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up, stood by the door, hands folded across his chest, a nine strapped inside a leather shoulder holster. Sebastian pointed at the man as he charged past her and said, “The hell’s wrong with you, Jack?” The room was empty of furniture; Sebastian’s voice echoed through the wide, cavernous space. “You want my guest to pass out? Open a couple of windows, will you? Get some fresh air in here.”
The man named Jack opened the pair of French doors for the large viewing deck that overlooked the ocean. Ellie could see only the sky, but she could smell the ocean, the salt and seaweed, riding on the cool breeze blowing from the water—bright, clean, and peaceful scents that belonged in this vaulted room, with its beautiful architecture, and now suddenly didn’t.
Sebastian turned to her. “Come, come,” he said, beckoning with a hand. “He’s not going to bite, I promise.”
Ellie didn’t move, staring at the floor. She’d spotted a couple of Anton’s teeth scattered in blood pooled on the floor around the chair.
The man from upstairs, Billy, was suddenly standing next to her. She hadn’t heard him come down. He placed a hand on the small of her back and urged her forward.
“Have her stand in front of him, Billy,” Sebastian said. “And be careful of the blood—I don’t want her to slip and fall.” Then, to Ellie: “Sorry to have you get so close, but Anton’s having a little problem in the sight department. You okay to stand, Faye? Or would you like a chair?”
Anton’s head twitched when he heard her name. A low, guttural moan escaped his throat. Strings of red saliva poured from the torn, swollen mess of what remained of his bottom lip. He tried to look up, couldn’t because of the pain or effort or both, and his head slumped forward again, his chin resting on his chest, near a tattoo of a heart wrapped in barbed wire.
“You look like you could sit,” Sebastian said when Ellie didn’t answer his question. “Billy, go upstairs and fetch that chair.”
Ellie now stood less than five feet away from Anton, gagging from the stomach-churning stench and god-awful carnage when Frank came in from the kitchen, holding a large glass bottle of Pellegrino. He drank deeply from it as he strolled across the room and moved behind Anton’s chair. He leaned forward to put down his bottle, and when he straightened she saw a cordless drill gripped in his hand. The drill bit was long and thick and covered with blood and bits of skin—Anton’s skin. Anton’s blood.
Frank hiccupped. “Excuse me,” he said, then pressed a fist against his mouth as he sucked in air through his nose and held it.
Billy set up the folding chair behind her. Ellie sat, grateful to no longer be standing, but she continued to sway, like she was on a boat going through choppy water. She gripped the edges of the chair with her sweaty hands as Sebastian got down on one knee beside her. He draped an arm across the back of her chair.
“Now,” Sebastian said to her. “The gentleman he met yesterday, the person you said he called Paul—Anton here tells me he has no idea where Paul is. Says he hasn’t seen Paul or his muscle-loving butt buddy, a guy named Bradley Guidry. Was he there yesterday, Faye?”
Ellie’s eyes never left Anton. “I . . . I don’t know. He . . .”
“He what?”
Ellie swallowed, feeling cold all over. “There was a guy there, a driver, and some other guy who was watching us. A sniper.”
Out of the corner of her eye Ellie saw Sebastian exchange a glance with Frank.
Ellie said, “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Oh, I believe you.”
“I never saw him. I don’t know his name.”
“That would be Mr. Guidry. Like you, Anton says he’s never even heard the name before. I respectfully called bullshit, and Anton respectfully disagreed, leading to the mess you see here.” Sebastian sighed, shook his head. “He should get an Olympic medal for being a stubborn bastard. He comes by it naturally, though, him and his Communist people. Isn’t that right, Anton?”
Anton moaned, then began to gag, spitting up blood. Ellie couldn’t look anymore, didn’t know where to look.
“I know this is quite a shock,” Sebastian said to her. “A beautiful woman like yourself isn’t used to seeing such grotesque things, I’m sure. But, quite frankly, you have no one to blame but yourself. You wouldn’t be here—we wouldn’t be here—if you had simply answered Frank’s questions.”
Ellie’s heart was hammering, blood pounding in her temples.
“We could have looked into the matter, conducted business like civilized people, then taken the appropriate actions,” Sebastian said. “Instead, you turned stubborn yourself—which probably explains why Anton likes you so much. You’re like two peas in a pod.”
Figure out a way to get through this.
“My hope—and I sincerely mean this, Faye—my hope is you’ll be more forthcoming than Anton. If not—if I think you’re holding back something—well, I don’t think I have to explain to you what will happen.”
“Fresno,” Ellie stammered.
“What about Fresno?”
“Where he met Paul.”
Tell him about the blood pill.
Christ, she had totally forgotten about it. She hadn’t told Frank about it, hadn’t given it to him. She needed to tell Sebastian about it now, get control of the situation before it—
Something hard banged against the floor, to her right. Ellie whipped her head toward the sound, saw the distinctive shape of a flash-bang grenade, the kind used by LAPD SWAT, skidding across the floor, toward her.
CHAPTER 28
SEBASTIAN HAD SEEN grenades in TV shows and movies but never in person. The moment he saw it hit the floor, he had two simultaneous thoughts: first, the grenade was oddly shaped—a long cylinder, like a can of Mace—and entirely black instead of a military green; second, he had to duck and seek cover somewhere, and do it fast or the shrapnel would kill him.
Faye Simpson tackled him, like a lineman, grabbing his shirt and pushing him forward. He fell against the hardwood, Faye still on top of him, and the back of his head smacked against the floor so hard, he was sure he had cracked his skull. His lungs froze and his stomach lurched, and Faye clamped her palm against his eyes and kept it pressed there as the room filled with an earsplitting boom he felt deep in his bones.
Someone screamed something in Russian. Faye scrabbled off Sebastian and his eyes flew open and he saw his men clutching at their faces and he saw them blinking and stumbling like they were blind. He saw flashes of men entering the far side of the room and his gaze landed on a guy with a blond ponytail, dressed in jeans and a white-collared shirt, standing near the front door, a compact submachine gun with a banana-shaped magazine gripped in leather-gloved hands.
Sebastian’s right hand flew into his suit jacket, reaching for his nine, when Ponytail fired. Ron’s man Jack collapsed, and Ponytail fired a killing round into Jack’s head and quickly turned his weapon to Frank, who was still standing behind Anton’s chair. To Frank, who seemed disoriented from the flash-bang but had his hand on the nine clipped to his waist.
“Not the girl!” Anton howled. “I want the bitch alive!”
Sebastian had his Glock out and the safety off. He fired at the shooter holding the submachine gun and hit him high in the shoulder as a short burst of gunfire erupted from the far right corner of the room. Sebastian’s eyes automatically flicked in that direction, past the moving bodies, past the limbs and furniture, and got a glimpse of the shooter.
Paul.
Paul was here and was getting to his feet and he fired again and Frank dropped to the floor, his limbs as limp and useless as a doll’s. Half his head was missing.
Sebastian froze, unable to process what had just happened. No, he
thought to himself, a scream rising in his throat. No, this isn’t happening. Frank and I are the good guys. We’re supposed to win. We’re supposed to—
Billy, the man Sebastian had assigned to watch Faye, was fast. The man who had been standing beside Billy, a guy Sebastian had never seen before, lay dead on the floor, in a pool of blood. From the corner of his eye he saw Faye army crawling across the slick red pool. He saw Billy withdraw his weapon in one smooth motion, flick off the safety with his thumb, and fire a double tap that took down the man with the submachine gun. Paul ducked for cover.
Faye had a handgun—someone must have dropped it, and she had gone after it—and now she was firing, too. Billy dropped to one knee and began firing into the room, Faye coming out of her cover, Sebastian counting one, two, three other shooters—
Paul. There he was, by the French doors.
Take him down.
End this.
Now.
Sebastian scrambled to his feet, the adrenaline making his legs feel as though they were as fragile as glass. He raised his Glock and Paul raised his nine and Paul was smiling, and Faye shoved him back, toward the hall, and Sebastian lost sight of Paul. She pushed him again and this time he pushed back. The fear he had seen in her earlier was gone, replaced by a grim determination he rarely saw in women.
Ava flashed through his mind as Faye said, “There are too many of them. We need to leave. Now.”
Sebastian realized she was right. They were outnumbered, outgunned.
Eyes on the room, Faye fired again. Again. “Car?”
“Garage,” he replied.
“You got the keys? Then move.”
He nodded, panting. When he realized Faye hadn’t followed, Sebastian looked over his shoulder, saw her firing into the room, laying down cover fire. Then she swung her handgun to Anton and fired.
Sebastian bolted down the hall, legs and limbs burning. Faye darted in front of him, clutched the doorknob, her hands and fingers slick with blood. Her entire front, even parts of her face and hair, was covered in it.
“Need to clear the garage first,” she said as gunshots erupted from the belly of the house. She threw open the door and cleared the area directly in front of her, Sebastian noticing how she paid close attention to her blind spots.
The Jaguar was parked next to Frank’s car—the only two things in there.
They cleared the garage easily.
Sebastian turned to the garage door opener mounted on the wall, punched the button with his fist. He barely heard the motor and gears working, his eardrums ruptured from all the gunshots in such close quarters.
Sebastian got behind the wheel. Faye had barely shut her door when he threw the gearshift in reverse and hit the gas.
The Jaguar launched backward like a rocket. It sped past the brick area in front of the house, the two of them bouncing in their seats. The back tires ran over the edge of the lawn and the car dipped and then tore down the small slope of grass.
Sebastian knew he was heading toward the stone wall securing the perimeter. Don’t crash, he thought, slamming on the brakes. The car skidded and then stopped. Faye bounced back against her seat and then lurched forward, her arm coming up at the last moment to protect her face from smashing against the dashboard.
A shooter came running along the side of the house. Sebastian heard gunfire and saw Paul running out of the garage, loading a fresh clip into his nine. A bullet slammed into the side of the car. The armor plating absorbed it, but it took Sebastian by surprise how powerful the impact was.
A nine-millimeter round didn’t have that kind of kick. But a round from a sniper rifle did.
Guidry is a sniper, Sebastian thought. He must be here, too.
Sebastian imagined his head in Guidry’s target site when he heard another report. Faye Simpson jumped at the sound and the windshield splintered but didn’t shatter because of the bulletproof glass. Sebastian heard another report as he hit the gas again, the tires kicking up dirt and grass and skidding across the lawn. When he got closer to the gate, he righted the car and, turning, heart twisting in his chest, saw Faye Simpson slumped against the door, a softball-sized exit wound in her back, near her shoulder.
CHAPTER 29
REAL ESTATE HAD been Frank’s idea. After being released from prison, Sebastian had moved in with Frank, who already had his real estate license. Frank took him under his wing, and after Sebastian got his license they began working together, selling homes in shitty neighborhoods and pooling their proceeds to save up for a place where they could house their own carriers and then begin making real money in the blood world.
When a mortuary in Northeast LA that specialized in low-cost cremation services came on the market, Frank wanted to jump on it. “Mortuaries and funeral homes—they’re always around us and people don’t like to pay attention to them; they pretend they don’t exist until they’re forced into it,” Frank had told him while eating shitty Chinese food in their even shittier apartment. “We can house a handful of carriers there, use it as our preliminary blood farm. It’s a good starting point, Sebastian—plus, it’ll come in handy down the road. It’s a hell of a lot easier and more convenient to cremate our enemies than it is to bury them.”
It was less risky overall, too, in terms of leaving behind evidence. Fire destroyed nearly everything.
Sebastian had lost count of the number of enemies they had killed and reduced to ash in the crematorium—people who had, effectively, vanished from the planet without a trace. And now he had to do the same with Frank.
The mortuary was no longer open to the public, and it didn’t advertise its services. Frank had been the only one who had keys to the place. Now Sebastian had those keys in his possession. He entered through the door in the private garage that had once housed a hearse.
The crematorium area would have looked like an old high school locker room from the turn of the twentieth century—gray industrial tiled floor and walls, the white ceiling yellowed from time and covered in decades of soot and grime—if it weren’t for the three ovens set up in the center of the room and, to the far right, a wall-sized refrigeration unit that could store up to nine corpses.
There was only one body in there now. Frank’s corpse had been resting in it for the past three days, and Sebastian had finally screwed up the necessary courage to take the next and final step.
After Sebastian fired up an oven, he sat on the floor, the machine rumbling against his back, coming to life. In all their years together, he had never imagined either himself or Frank going out this way. He didn’t know how they would die, but it wouldn’t have been like this. Not like this.
This was the second time death had stolen an important person from his life, and what struck Sebastian was how quiet his mind still was. Like the smooth surface of a pond. In prison, when he’d been told his mother had died, he had experienced a piercing loss, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t, even if he wanted to, because showing any weakness in that hellhole would single you out, make you a target. He bottled it up, which turned out to be an easy thing to do since his grief had quickly been replaced by rage at the injustice of being denied his God-given right to attend his mother’s funeral. He tucked away the rage, too, focused his time and energy on staying vigilant, on finding a way to get out of here and then properly deal with his enemies.
With Frank’s death, the only thing he felt was alone. Marooned. Alien. Sebastian also had the additional burden of dealing with the practical matters of the death of a man who, arguably, was as close to him as a brother. He had already told the people at the real estate office that Frank had decided to take a vacation, but that would work for only so long. At some point he’d have to come up with a legitimate reason why Frank hadn’t returned. Thank God Frank didn’t have a family or any close friends who would be coming around, asking questions.
“You deserve a proper send-off,” Sebastian said to t
he empty room. “I wish I could give you one. I wish I could do a lot of things differently.”
Sebastian rubbed at his face, not knowing what to say but knowing he should say something. He wished Ava were sitting next to him right now. Ava had known Frank. If she were here, she would know what to say, tell him how he should handle this moment.
But she wasn’t here. No one was. He was alone—weren’t we all, in the end?—and he had to handle it himself and he didn’t have the faintest idea what he should say, because, really, what could he say? Frank was dead. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and there was nothing he could do to change it. How did that prayer go, again? Grant me the serenity, God, to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can, and give me the wisdom to know the difference. A lot of truth in those words, sure, but that’s all they were: just words. And words were meaningless.
I’m sorry, he thought. Start with that.
“I’m sorry for everything I’ve done, what I’ve put you through. Reason you’re dead is probably because of me. No, not probably. I caused it.” It was true. Frank had wanted to take a subtler, more cautious approach to dealing with Anton’s disloyalty—possibly to use Anton to lure in Paul. Sebastian didn’t want any part of it. He was sick of waiting, and his anger had, once again, blinded him.
“I’m sorry,” Sebastian said again. “I wish I could give you something more. But that’s all I’ve got. That’s all any of us get in this life.”
Sebastian got to his feet and pushed the gurney to the refrigerator, holding back the tears that wanted to come. He would grieve properly later, after this matter with Paul was put to bed. First, business. Frank, he knew, would understand—would be proud of him for forging ahead.
CHAPTER 30
ELLIE USUALLY TOOK for granted the way her memory worked, the speed and ease with which she could recall even the minutest details.