by Lee Winter
“Something happened two years ago that changed everything. It altered the way I thought about things. And certain people. Those events were the beginning. That night, a year later, that you and I said goodbye was the middle. Now, here I stand, at the end.”
“What happened two years ago?” Alison asked. “I mean apart from me unmasking you at the Melbourne Cup.”
“You don’t want to ask that.”
A sick sensation rose in Alison’s guts when she remembered the “other” things Natalya had done with her life. Things it would be a very bad idea to ask about.
“Yes,” Natalya said coolly. “That’s why. But even so, one event changed everything, as I’m only now fully beginning to appreciate.”
* * *
Two Years Ago
Two days after the Melbourne Cup
Natalya adjusted her gloves and studied her handiwork. With a long, casual stride, she walked slowly around the figure in the Newman Pig Farm feed trough. He was naked, covered in mud, trussed and gagged, his eyes bulging with fear.
“You made me miss my flight,” she chided, voice low and unimpressed. “I should have been halfway to Paris by now. But no, I had to detour to fix a situation that I realised sorely needed my skills to rectify.
He tried to speak, but the gag got in the way.
She raised a bucket and poured more mud in the trough.
“Now, Mr Moore. Or is it Zebra? You have been a wicked man. I understand that you have been hurting your little girl. And that is intolerable.
“You have also made life miserable for that little girl’s mother. She is a husk of the woman you married. Also intolerable. A big brute of a man like you, picking on a woman and a child? Where is your shame?
“You also treated your sister-in-law cruelly. I hear you think she’s a dyke who doesn’t deserve opportunities at work because that would be nepotism, and you don’t feel her colleagues would like her getting her chance to shine. You also planned to exile her.
“Let me tell you what all of that is: homophobic, Neanderthal, misogynistic bullying. Of course these are only the crimes against your family. What about the wider world? What about how you got your nickname?
She arched her eyebrow. “You beat to death a dog. Kicked in the heads of two homeless men. You are the worst kind of individual. And, yes, I am aware of the irony. An assassin calling you the worst. But at least I’m about delivering justice—it’s hard to fathom what you stand for.”
He shook his head vigorously.
“Doubts? I thought you might have a few. The thing about working for a crime family or four is you get to know where all the dirt is buried.” She reached into her coat and held up a CD.
“Security footage from the back alley at the Hyatt, where you killed. There’s also a highlights reel of various other illegal acts gathered over the years. Accepting bribes to drop people’s charges was especially crude. But spending the money on prostitutes instead of the people in your life you’re supposed to love? Well, that’s just sad.
“I’ve known this CD exists for years. So has everyone else in my circles. This should tell you how bad you are as a cop that almost every criminal in town has a copy of it and no one has ever had a NEED to blackmail you with it. Because you are that corrupt, that lazy. Even the lowest filth see you as one of them. I suspect IBAC will find this to be fascinating viewing. Maybe the media will, too? Yes?”
She slid the disc back into her pocket. She studied him. “Look at you. Not only making me late, but making me monologue. That never happens.”
She prodded his pudgy face with her gloved index finger. “Your daughter has more spirit in her pinky than you have in your whole body. It impresses me that in spite of her gene pool she still has that spark.
“Your sister-in-law has more goodness, decency and innocence in her than either of us will ever see in our lifetimes.
“You picked the wrong people to mistreat this time. Because anyone who mistreats Hailey Moore or Alison Ryan or the ones they love insults me. And no one ever insults Requiem. They are under my protection. As such, I intend to make sure that in my absence you can never hurt them ever again.
“Ah. I see that surprises you. You think an assassin can’t find people worthy of admiration? It’s impossible not to like them. Which makes your actions even more unfathomable.
“Now don’t fret, your family won’t be unduly worried about your welfare. I’ve taken care of everything. I packed your bags and other travel essentials for you while you were settling into these new accommodations a few hours ago. You’ll find your luggage weighted at the bottom of the Yarra. Your body, meanwhile, will never be found. You probably don’t want to know how indiscriminate and thorough hungry pigs are.
“Now then, deep breath, because I assure you, it will be your last…”
She clamped his head in a vice-like grip, pushing it into the mud and animal faecal matter. She smothered his face in the muck impassively, as the revolting body of the cruellest of men twitched and savagely jerked. Then, finally, Detective Barry Moore suffocated, quite literally, with his snout in the trough.
She glanced around, wondering how often the farmer got to this far-flung end of his vast farm. His main troughs were a great distance away, much closer to the road. Several pigs trundled past her, snuffling, nuzzling at the body. She smiled. Moore was among his own kind now.
Natalya then turned and walked back to her Ninja. She settled onto the seat, pressed play on Arvo Pärt, and slipped her earbuds in.
She still had to leave this country. Still had to slither past a cop who was determined to hunt her.
Natalya smiled in spite of herself. The little mouse had done what no others ever had.
Surprised her.
Really, she couldn’t be more impressed at the woman’s creativity in trying to find Requiem. The ballsiness of the woman to buy her own hit. The endearing optimism against astronomically low odds.
Natalya would win in the end, of course. She always did. But this time she actually appreciated the challenge.
She started the engine and then sped off into the dark, as the soul-cleansing strains of Fratres (String and Percussion) played on.
As she passed by the old trough, her eyes trailed across the body. A strange, lost feeling flooded her about what it meant that she was even here. Detouring instead of running. Giving the mouse this special parting gift she would never know about.
She pushed the unsavoury thought hurriedly aside. She had a replacement flight to organise. And this, whatever it was, was just a foolish distraction.
* * *
Present day
“You want to know why I’m here now?” Natalya said. She studied Alison in the soft rain under the streetlight. This face had become so familiar to her. The innocence of it, the softness. It had more of an edge these days, as it should. She ran a police unit. She brought down organised crime.
But still, there was no hiding its appeal. At least to her.
“It takes time to pull apart your soul,” Natalya admitted.
And hadn’t that been the painful truth.
“But love?” Alison said sceptically. “You don’t do love. You don’t do any emotion without a cello in your hands.”
“Even if I don’t do love, I do feel,” Natalya countered and stared at her intently, willing her to understand. “You make me feel. That’s the truth. Besides, this isn’t just about me. It’s time your musical soul was properly fed in Europe, not left wasting away in the Antipodes. You belong there, away from this underbelly of dirt and crime. Join me.”
“As what? Orchestra groupie? Travel companion? Convenient fuck?”
Natalya’s nostrils flared at the distasteful question but she supposed she deserved it. She took a step closer. “How about an international tourist of music, off feeding your creative soul? And someone who means something to me.”
Alison’s uncertainty was clear.
“You realise I’m still a cop?” she asked.
&nbs
p; “And I’m a non-practising ‘coffee drinker.’ I may have even kicked the habit; who can say? But you’re far worse than a cop. You’re a violinist.”
Alison rolled her eyes.
“The thing is,” Natalya said, turning serious, “I’ve come to realise certain truths. Some things are more valid than zero, for example. Some things matter more than immutable rules. They transcend them.”
It wasn’t a declaration of love exactly. Maybe she really didn’t have that in her; Natalya wasn’t sure. Not yet. But this was not nothing to her. Far from it. This was more than she’d ever offered anyone.
“How can I trust you?” Alison asked, her body swaying closer, seemingly without her knowledge. “How can I believe that after all this time, that my feelings suddenly matter to you? That you won’t break my heart just because you can? And we both know you could.”
“Can’t you tell?” Natalya asked her in confusion. “Would I be here otherwise? Can’t you see me?” she added, repeating back Alison’s own words.
A small little frown formed between Alison’s eyebrows.
“But won’t you destroy me? And I, you? You said that once. You believed it.”
“Yes,” Natalya said with a sigh. “And I still do. That will happen. But not today.”
“Not today?” Alison peered at her. “If it’s inevitable then why risk it? Why even bother?”
“Because I’m Requiem,” Natalya snarled. “And if I can’t take a risk, I may as well be already dead.”
She shot Alison her haughtiest smile, the one she used to show her arrogance regarding her place in the world. If she had to believe for both of them, she would.
“Yes,” Alison said quietly, “You’re Requiem. Are you still, though?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I need to know. Do you still hunt? Do you want to?”
“She’s part of me.”
“I know that. That wasn’t the question.”
“Lola’s gone,” Natalya finally admitted. “Requiem lived for Lola. I don’t.”
And it was true. She could not definitively rule out this part of herself forever. But the circumstances would have to be extreme to force her to kill again. Alison nodded slowly.
“Aren’t you afraid of being caged? Picket fences? Suburban dreariness?”
“Yes.” Natalya was terrified, actually.
“But still you want me to come with you?” Incredulity edged Alison’s tone.
“Yes.” Natalya had thought this through. A European tour was the antithesis of being caged. She could play. She could roam. She could…feel. And she would survive.
Until she didn’t. Until Alison wanted the picket fences and mundaneness, and left her.
At that thought she added: “It’s a crazy idea, I know. We will implode eventually. But as you once said, what a way to go.”
“You aren’t really romantic, are you?” Alison studied her, her expression half amused, half pained. “I say ‘I love you,’ and you give me a farewell fuck and barely break a sweat. But then? Then you turn up to say ‘Come to Europe, we’ll probably destroy each other, but until then, let’s get paella.’ So this isn’t exactly the greatest pitch of all time.”
Her expression was tight with tension. Natalya sighed. She was doing this all wrong. She was terrible at this. She should just walk away with what was left of her dignity.
But still. In the lift of the chin, and the fleck of blue, she could see hope there, too.
“You’re right,” Natalya admitted. “I’ve never done this before. It’s insanity, given all the things I am and what we are to each other. Hunter and prey. But here I am. This is what I am and you know it: I play. I kill. And I feel.”
“What do you feel? At least tell me that,” Alison asked.
Natalya hesitated. Every lesson from Lola about hiding weakness came rushing back, attacking her like fleas. She pushed the panic aside and said simply: “I miss you.”
Alison absorbed this, then said, “That night we shared? Did you feel then? Did you feel anything for me?”
Natalya hesitated. “This matters to you?”
“It does. I don’t even know who fucked me that night. It drives me crazy thinking about it sometimes. Was it you or Her?”
“It was both of us. And at the end, it was just me. But we both felt. I can’t tell you how rare that is. That’s what I meant when I said I’d been telling you all along how I felt.
“Do you think I’d entrust my African violet to just anyone? Or show you how I touch myself, because I knew it was your fantasy to watch? Or strip myself bare before for you in every sense?
“I showed you how I felt through music. I shared with you in a way I never have before. I laid my soul before you. Couldn’t you see that? Didn’t you understand? Don’t you know I have done that for no one else in my life?”
Alison didn’t speak. She simply stared at her, eyes wide with shock.
“Now here I am, asking you to take a leap of faith with me,” Natalya continued. “To take a risk, too. Without you, my music feels lifeless. My soul feels alive when you’re near. Besides all the sights we will see, the music we will experience will nourish you forever.”
And I need you, she almost admitted. She hoped Alison could see that even if the words didn’t form on her lips. Words she had never been able to say before.
The rain on Alison’s eyelashes made her blink away the water in her eyes. Natalya couldn’t be entirely sure it was just rain.
“I don’t know what to believe.” Alison said. “I want a relationship of equals. I want all of you, not just the parts you allow me to touch. How do I know you’re open to that? I need to believe.”
“Believe.” Natalya leaned forward, hovered briefly and then her lips brushed against Alison’s. It was an erotic sensation, with the promise of so much more. A first for her in so many ways.
Alison responded, wrapping her arms around her, and Natalya deepened the kiss. In that moment she knew immediately why she’d never done this before.
This was intimate. So frighteningly intimate. Part of her wanted to recoil. To run. To tear her flawed, human skin off and disappear and never be seen again. It was more powerful than anything in her existence. It filled her senses. It ripped down her walls, every last one of them she’d painstakingly built for three decades. The sensation ricocheted through her body, leaving her weak.
Natalya did not do weak, her brain protested feebly.
And yet, here she was. She made a sound that was both panic and wonder, then Alison clutched her tighter, reassuring her, pressing their bodies together. She could feel Alison’s heartbeat, thudding quickly, and the warmth of her. The solidness.
When they pulled away, Alison was grasping at Natalya’s rain-soaked shirt and Natalya was trying desperately to anchor herself.
“Okay,” came Alison’s small, croaked voice. “I believe.”
Relief coursed through her.
“Paella you say?” Alison added, offering a lopsided grin.
“Best in the world,” Natalya said, trying to regain her equilibrium. “There’s a little place in Santiago de Compostela I found. It translates to The Saints. Where better for musical immortals to dine than with saints?”
Alison smiled up at her. “I’m probably crazy…but yes. Whisk me to your paella heaven.”
Natalya inhaled. “Yes?” Delight shattered what was left of her reserves and for the first time in her adult life, she made no effort to hide it. She smiled. Genuinely.
“Hell yeah,” Alison repeated, grinning from ear to ear.
“Well, this should be interesting,” Natalya said. “You and me. Until the implosion.”
“Yep,” Alison agreed, rocking back on her heels. “Should be.”
Natalya looked down to find soft fingers entwining with hers.
Requiem would have laughed at the gesture. Snatched her hand away. Mocked her.
Their first time together, their only time, Natalya had given of herself to Alison in a
way she never had another soul. Alison didn’t know the half of that, couldn’t know, but it was the truth. She had never shared certain things with anyone. She had certainly never sat at her cello and played her feelings for another person to pick apart.
Now Natalya had come back for this kind and gentle woman, the antithesis of Requiem in so many ways. Natalya had kissed her. She had survived. She wanted more.
She might screw it all up tomorrow, but so help her, she needed more.
Not trusting herself with the imprecision of words, Natalya tightened her grip on the small fingers as rain coursed down the beautiful face in front of her.
With a shocked gasp, she finally understood what all of this meant. What it had meant all along.
Because to say Natalya Tsvetnenko felt nothing was incorrect.
A common misconception about those in her line of work.
Love was not nothing.
###
Requiem for Immortals soundtrack
Requiem’s Theme
Fratres (String and Percussion)
by Arvo Pärt
Showering with a Killer
Lacrimosa from Requiem
by Mozart
Alison’s Theme
Spiegel im Spiegel
by Arvo Pärt
Chaos Theory
The works of Harry Partch
Natalya Feels
The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, Pathétique
by Tchaikovsky
Alison’s Perfect Imperfection
Requiem for Immortality
by Alison Ryan and Koori elders
Natalya’s Perfection
1,935 seconds of silence
by Natalya Tsvetnenko
The Seduction of Natalya Tsvetnenko
Concierto de Aranjuez
by Joaquin Rodrigo
Breaching the Walls: Requiem’s requiem
The Rains of Castamere (Game of Thrones S2)
by Ramin Djawdi
About Lee Winter
Lee Winter is an award-winning newspaper journalist and in her 27-year career has lived in virtually every state of Australia, covering courts, crime, entertainment, hard news, features and humor writing.
These days she’s a sub-editor at a Sunday metro newspaper, lives with her girlfriend of 17 years and has a fascination for shiny new gadgets and trying to understand the bizarre world of US politics.