“Fuck, it’s getting worse. No, I can’t do this anymore… I can’t.” Nikolai sighed in delight. A female scream cut through the recording before it died.
Jezebel could only stare in disbelief. She picked up a cool syringe and held it before the light. When she saw the fingerprints outlined in the glass, she had a terrible feeling as to who they belonged. She reached for the forensic powder and adhesive tape to lift the fingerprints. It wasn’t long before she consulted the database and located a positive match.
Her first reaction was to vomit.
Thirty minutes later, the door slammed open to Nikolai’s office and Jezebel burst inside.
“Nikolai!” she screamed. His chair sat empty.
* * *
Vivian planted her toes on the orange grates that composed the floor. One false move could send her foot plunging through the holes in a move that would surely twist her ankle. Suddenly, a moaning sound ricocheted through the grates.
Vivian spun in place, peering through the darkness. She saw him. Viktor hobbled along below, dragging something bloody wrapped in a black tarp.
“Camilla!” Vivian screamed, falling to her knees and scratching at the grates. Viktor lifted his head to see her. Those empty lenses of his gas mask bore no trace of eyes, only monochrome sockets. With a grunt, he heaved the tarp along behind him. “Camilla!” Vivian sprinted across the grates only to be swallowed up by a set of stairs. She pounced down the steps, heedless of the dire consequences awaiting her.
She paused on the lower level when she saw the trail of blood, like dark syrup splashed across a subterranean arena. She couldn’t even see what lurked beneath the grates she traversed. Fumbling in her pocket, she extracted her cell phone and dialed 112, the European emergency number equivalent of 911. She didn’t care anymore if the police arrived and arrested her for the murder of Tatiana.
“You’ve reached emergency services. How can I help you?”
“Send someone to Syllax Pharmaceuticals immediately! I’m here with the serial killer and he’s got Camilla!”
“What is your name?”
“Vivian Xu! Viktor is here and—”
“Stay on the line please.”
“You need to send someone now!”
“I’m dispatching several units to your location, please calm down.”
They won’t show up in time, Vivian thought. It will take at least twenty minutes to arrive. Can I stay alive for that long?
“What killer are you talking about?” the emergency operator droned in a nasally voice.
“Viktor Rezník! He’s responsible for the murders of six women around Prague, including Krista LaCroix!”
Silence. No doubt the police operator was stunned that an ordinary person knew the truth about the investigation. She may even be looking up “Vivian Xu” and ogling the arrest warrant for murder.
“We need you to wait outside the facility for your own safety. The officers will meet you at a specially designated post. We need to ask you some questions while we search for your friend.”
Bullshit, they want to arrest me for murder. While I’m still breathing, I’m going to do what I can for Camilla.
“Are you still there?” the operator asked.
“I need to help Camilla.”
“Please stay on the line!” Vivian’s heels scraped across the grates as she neared the end of the corridor.
“Camilla!” she cried out. Obscenities grasped at her attention as she ran. Damp tarps were draped across the walls. A choir of unseemly sounds filled her head, something sexual and violent that oozed down the hall.
She skidded to a stop.
The tarp lay uncoiled on the floor like a bloody cocoon. However, Camilla’s body wasn’t sprawled on the blackened plastic.
“Camilla?” she whimpered.
A blow rained down on her head, a crack that may as well have split the world asunder. The floor rushed up to greet her in a wave of pain. Vivian couldn’t see through the daze that ravaged her sight. Diamond-like specks of light swam before her, and the outline of a window winked from across the darkness.
She lay crumpled on the floor, cowering in the rust-colored light of the complex. Suddenly, his hand seized her by her collar. Viktor held the needle to her throat. A fate worse than death awaited her; a drug that would break her mind, making her no better than him.
Would she, too, be gunned down like an animal for the benefit of society?
The needle teased her neck, one prick away from eternal damnation.
“No,” she pleaded.
His palm imploded against a bullet, dropping the needle from his bloody stumps. Vivian swerved to her left to see Nikolai. She gawked as he pumped the trigger a second time. Viktor’s head snapped at a bizarre angle as the second bullet tore through his jaw.
Another explosion split the silence in two and something wet splashed against Vivian.
Viktor’s body collapsed at her feet, bleeding to death.
“Mother,” he whispered, gazing solemnly at Vivian. “You aren’t Mother.”
Vivian quivered as his breath coagulated with blood. He was drowning inside the gas mask. She turned away as Nikolai’s footsteps thudded closer. So Viktor wouldn’t kill her after all. Nikolai would have the sole pleasure of absolving her with a single bullet.
“Nikolai…”
The barrel pressed against her forehead.
He was prepared to eliminate her as the final liability. Vivian heard the bullet click in the chamber.
“Why?” she whispered. She didn’t expect an answer. He was much too cold to grant her a reason. Vivian squeezed her eyes shut and awaited the explosion of steel.
She refused to cry, to show him any sign of surrender. He may kill her and leave her as a nameless corpse never to be found, but she would never beg for mercy.
She would never yield.
Nikolai was taking longer to pull the trigger than Vivian expected. She summoned the courage to open her eyes, and the spectacle that met her was stunning. A tear rolled down Nikolai’s face.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
TWENTY-ONE
“Oh my God,” Nikolai whispered. The gun slipped from his hand and ricocheted against the floor. He stared at Vivian.
“Emily…” he sputtered. “I’ve been searching for you for so long. I was afraid I would never see you again.”
“What—?”
She gasped as Nikolai crushed her in a hug.
“I’ve missed you so much. I’ll never lose you again,” he choked, sheltering her in his embrace.
In those moments, tears began to well in the corners of Vivian’s eyes, longing to hear those words from her own father. She trembled in Nikolai’s arms, and he planted a gentle kiss on her cheek.
“It’s okay. He won’t hurt you anymore. No one can take you away from me. I’ll always be here to protect you, I promise.”
“Nikolai—” Tears poured from his eyes and he buried his forehead against hers. In his drug-addled eyes, he had finally reunited with his daughter.
He clasped her tight for fear she would vanish. As long as he held on, they would always be together.
“I’m sorry for trying to kill the memories of you… I’m sorry for drinking them away, throwing myself at women, for letting myself become so weak. I tried. I really tried to put my life together. You have no idea… You were my only link to happiness.”
He folded in on himself like an infant rejected by his mother.
“Please don’t abandon me to myself.”
He silently vowed to be her guardian, to cherish and protect her until the strength left his bones and dust replaced the blood in his veins. No one could tear them apart this time. No one.
Nikolai’s hands slipped from her arms. Only then did Vivian register the other figures surrounding them. Two police officers restrained Nikolai while a third snapped handcuffs around his wrists.
“Nikolai Koslov, you’re under arrest for the murder of Dr. Radik Cervenka and Tatiana
Pražakova.”
Nikolai wrestled with the handcuffs, wearing the same dejected expression Vivian wore when he detained her. He tried to wrap his arms around her one last time, but he couldn’t.
“Emily, I love you so much. Please don’t forget me.” His eyes begged her.
“I won’t.”
Vivian stood there in wonder, overwhelmed by a flood of emotions. The officers began to lead Nikolai away. Even as they shackled him, she felt a burden slide off her own shoulders. Viktor was dead and the chain of grisly murders had come to an end. She no longer owed her life to Nikolai or an investigation mired in secrecy. Maybe now she could return to a normal way of living.
“Shall I take you back to the station?” a voice said, jolting her from reverie. She looked into the eyes of a cop. His hand extended to hers. The last time she shook hands with a man, she had plunged into the darkest recesses of human nature, an ordeal that almost claimed her life and sanity. Somehow she knew this man offered a different path. He was welcoming her back into society.
A smile graced her lips.
“Yes, I would like that.”
And she took his hand.
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER.
“I’ll wait out here,” Camilla said, skidding to a stop in the hall. Several nurses breezed past, transporting patients to the radiology department. The doors flung open and Camilla evaded one of the emergency technologists wheeling in an elderly woman. Nurses chattered in the background on lines with other departments, clarifying physicians’ orders.
“Oh, come on! My father was just cranky from the painkillers the other day.”
“I don’t know. He sounded pretty sincere when he said he would kick my ass for that Red Widow article. Besides, I really shouldn’t intrude on your time with him. I would only be a distraction.”
“Okay, if you say so. I’ll only be five minutes. I just want to see him off before…”
Camilla nodded.
“I understand. Take all the time you need.”
Vivian flashed a warm smile. It was hard to imagine she almost lost Camilla six months ago to a depraved killer.
As Vivian ducked into the hospital dorm, Camilla noticed a stack of newspapers in the patients’ lounge. She picked up the latest edition of Blaze, fixated by the headline.
Nikolai Koslov pleads guilty to the murder of Pražakova and Cervenka, written by Camilla Vesely.
She sighed and folded the newspaper. Before they entered Syllax Pharmaceuticals, Camilla returned to Prague to send a package to the medical examiner. That parcel contained the hollow point bullets and syringes she scrounged up from Nikolai’s house.
She hoped the medical examiner would piece the evidence together and finger Nikolai as the culprit in Tatiana’s murder. Her intuitions told her that Vivian couldn’t be responsible for the woman’s death, and those inklings rarely missed their mark.
Nikolai had left his prints all over the bullets, which matched the gunshot wounds on Tatiana.
During police interviews, Nikolai confessed to executing Tatiana before dumping her corpse in the alleys. She must have found a connection between Nikolai and Syllax to suffer such a dire fate—perhaps within the nightstand.
As for Dr. Cervenka, his tattered body was discovered in his office with over a dozen stab wounds to his face. The savageness of the crime was on par with Viktor Rezník’s killings—and the needle marks almost convinced the police that his rampage now included a male victim.
Oddly enough, there were small traces of blood in the office that didn’t match Viktor’s DNA profile. Jezebel was quick to pair the blood samples with Nikolai’s and alert the police of his crimes. If that wasn’t enough, Cervenka’s phone records revealed that he spoke to Nikolai shortly before the murder, placing him in close proximity when the crime occurred.
But the mysteries didn’t end there. During Camilla’s investigation, she learned no one matched the description of the vagrant Vivian allegedly killed. A firearms forensics analyst concluded that Vivian never fired the gun in her possession. It seemed more likely that she fantasized about the entire incident.
But none of that mattered anymore. Vivian was safe from Nikolai and Viktor’s twisted schemes, as was every woman who dared to sleep soundly at night in Prague.
* * *
Vivian set down her backpack stuffed with medical terminology books. Spring semester had concluded in a flurry of finals that left her head spinning. At last, she could retreat from her textbooks for a few weeks before plunging back into the fray.
Vivian swept the hospital curtain aside, expecting to find her father in a comatose sleep and quite possibly drooling on his gown.
Instead she found him tugging on the IV in his arm.
“Dad, you have to leave it in!” She rushed to his side and squeezed his hand. Looking down at the IV arching from his arm, she stole a glance at her own wrist. The needle mark had faded several months ago.
Fortunately, some of Viktor’s research remained, identifying the enzyme used to break down Syllax in the body. The detox screenings ensured every drop of Syllax was purged from her veins.
“What? No flowers for me today?” her father asked with a weary smile, relaxing his thick arm. He was still fighting the sedative, flexing the same stubbornness Vivian inherited from him.
“I have something even better,” she smiled.
“Oh?”
She reached into her backpack, digging through hundreds of pages of textbooks and the lunch her mother packed.
“My physiology essay,” she proclaimed, brandishing it with glee. “My teacher told me I have the highest score in the class.” Her father excitedly grabbed the report and began to read. Moments later, his brow wrinkled with concern.
“You wrote about Syllax?”
“Well, you could say I’m somewhat of an expert in that field of knowledge.”
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. “I’m just surprised you would revisit that subject. Your mother tells me you stopped going to therapy.”
“I think I’ve finally made peace with what happened.”
“Six months is too short a time to put that behind you.”
“Trust me, Dad, I’m fine. I don’t wake up in a panic in the middle of the night anymore. I don’t even think about the serial killer or Syllax. Maybe it’s because I don’t have time to think about it. I’m so consumed with my studies so I can test back into the nursing program.”
“But you still think about Nikolai?” he asked. Vivian’s face took on the countenance of petrified stone, and her eyes burned intensely.
“How can I not?” she growled. “He almost killed you. It hasn’t been the same since you’ve been confined to the hospital.” She gazed solemnly at his chest, where the bullet had penetrated and unfolded into razor-sharp petals. The damage to his spine had paralyzed him from the waist down, and his legs were growing emaciated from the months of disuse.
Her father suddenly gasped in pain and floundered in bed.
“Can I get you anything?” Vivian said, frantically looking for a glass of water or an extra pillow.
“No, honey, it’s fine,” he sighed. “I’m due for my final operation soon. The doctors claim they missed some shrapnel from that damned bullet. Sometimes I wonder if those idiots just like to poke around my guts until they find something out of place.”
He chuckled dryly.
The morning sun peeked through the curtains and chased away the darkness and despair in his heart. He couldn’t see beyond the window as it glowed brilliantly. It filled him with an exhilarating sense of wonder, and he imagined what awaited him beyond this life and this simple existence on earth.
“Vivian, I’ve had plenty of time to think while I’ve been in the hospital… and I want to tell you something should I never get the chance to.”
“Don’t, Dad. You make it sound like you won’t be coming back.” The cruel thought of her father leaving brought scorching tears to her eyes.
“No, Vivian, you
need to hear this. I realize I haven’t done a good job of telling you what you mean to me. I’m quick to point out your flaws or say what you should do with your life, but I never take the time to encourage you. I’m sorry for that.”
“Dad, I know you care about me.”
“But when was the last time I said you are intelligent? Or beautiful? Can you remember the last time I said you could always come to me when you were in trouble? You’re blossoming into a strong, intelligent woman and soon you won’t need me anymore… even though I wish you could stay my daughter forever.”
“I’m always going to be your daughter!”
“But I almost lost you. I only have myself to blame for letting fear drive a wedge between us. I don’t say I love you nearly as much I should or tell you how proud I am to be your father. Don’t think for a second that I’m ashamed of you or that I withhold my love. Even when we have our differences, when it comes down to it, you are the most special woman in my life.”
Vivian nodded, finding it hard to accept his praise. She was her harshest critic, and it was almost too much to hear these words from her father. There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t doubt her dreams or brand herself a failure.
Her father stroked her hand.
“You have ambitions that I would never dream of attempting on my own. Even if you have to make mistakes along the way, I know you possess the strength to pick yourself back up. Vivian, I’m begging you. Let go of your fear. Don’t be afraid to fail.”
Vivian winced as the first of many tears slipped through her cold façade. She hated for him to see her cry. She had braved death more than enough times, but she feared failure worse than mortality itself, than the prospect of never rising from the lowest place in society.
“I’ll… I’ll try not to be afraid anymore.”
The rigid walls surrounding her emotions came tumbling down as he kissed her lightly on the cheek.
Red Widow (Vivian Xu, Book 1) Page 27