by Reid Astor
He embraces her, and she is like a twig in his arms. He hears the click of Etburn raising the gun, but Svetlana raises a hand and presses it to his back, waving the youth away, it seems, protecting him. “I’m so scared of you,” he whispers, feeling the tears hot and verging on his eyelids in spite of himself. She is so close- and to think that she is all that his life has led up to this point. “You took my father. My mother. My life. My brothers. My eye.”
“Don’t be afraid,” she says, softly, cheek turned against his bloodsoaked chest. “I did this to your father, too. And we had some of the best years together, and he reaped such riches, before he betrayed me. But you see how that is rewarded. Give Svetlana everything else and she will take care of you. Turn me away and Etburn will fire. It is simple, isn’t it? I make it easy, don’t I?”
He kneels, he kneels and feels her rise up to meet him and then rise higher, buries his face in her belly and the soft white of her suit. He feels the crusted blood scrape his knees, the rugs all along the floor chafe at him, but still he takes each of her hands in his own and cradles them close to his lips. Those veins, those wrinkles, the faintest pulse cold in her wrist- he feels it amid the smell of iron and incense. “You already have everything,” he says. “You are everything I am and ever was.”
She smiles, and runs a hand through his hair, tenderly working through the matted locks. “Oh, Kolyenka, that’s not-”
“But you are not my God,” he says, the virulence pounding through his neck, his chest, in his arms—the desire destroy turned to need, the need turned to instinct.
He draws the razor from his jacket pocket and drives it into the wrists inches from his face. And he does it again, and again, and then into her belly, and turns her around so that Etburn’s next shellout of bullets go straight into the body of Svetlana Morris.
The blood sprays in his face and he prays, desires, wishes to be hit in some deep part of him- and another part just says-
This was coming all along from the moment you were born.
And when the gunfire is over and Etburn is out of bullets and half-screaming, half-gasping to reload, and Niklas feels hot pain blazing somewhere in his shoulder, barely discriminate from the steaming blackness soaking his entire body from the body in his arms, he yells out, “остановись!- Stop!”
She’s still flailing, rasping, but from the heat stroking his hand from her head, she’s gone, drooping heavy in his arms in paroxysms with blood spilling from her lips and a distant, faded look in her eyes. He barely sees her in the darkness, through the coursing pain in his own body coming from some far-away, unfamiliar place, but he sees the woman in the picture on Lars’ laptop, that beautiful, foxish creature’s face in stark candlelit relief.
Fixed in death. Fingers shaking, he shuts her eyes and lets her go.
“Fuck,” the boy chokes a sob and the new magazine clicks into places. Snot still coming from his nose, he raises the AK-47 to aim. A shadow cast by the candlelight dances behind his shivering figure, but all Niklas really can see is red and black in a dancing, taunting blur. “What am I gonna tell the others, huh, boss? What are they gonna do to me if I don’t do this? When they see- fuck, when they see her,--“ Resolution, if only for a moment, melts over his sweaty features. “I have to do this.”
This is about where Niklas isn’t sure if he’s awake anymore.
A hand reaches from the darkness and drags the gun sideways, and a round empties itself into the screens to Niklas’ right. He watches, frozen inside, as the gun flips upward and is yanked completely out of Etburn’s twisted wrists and the boy is butted brutally sideways of the head, thrown backward on his rump.
“Lars,” he says, numbly.
Etburn lets out a pitchy cry and rolls, stumbling on all fours and cradling his head in his hand but also reaching, snatching through the darkness to attack. “Who the hell-”
The detective violently chucks the gun away and draws his own on the kid. “You want to shut up right now,” he says. The viciousness is gone from his manner- he just stares down with a strange precision, both hands steadily holding the weapon. “Yeah, good.” Then, with swift precision, he marches on the kid, clicks on safety, and pistol whips him across the face.
Etburn hits the ground and doesn’t get up. Niklas takes it as a good moment to back away from Svetlana’s corpse, to get up- something.
“Don’t-” Lars turns, mechanical and eerie in his professionalism. He looks, reddened eyes surveying the scene, the body, the blood blackening Niklas’s entire body now. And he gives a breath, whispers, “Ah, shit-“, and advances, holstering his gun to reach to his inner jacket pocket. “…Even after all this, you’re... Shit. I’m so fucking sorry, Nikky. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“You’re not-” he starts, but stops as the man draws a badge and flips it open.
The ID inside- or, precisely, the logo across it- is unmistakable. In the candlelight the golden shades shimmer, alluring, threatening.
“Agent Lawrence Cromwell, F.B.I.,” he reads, slowly, feeling his chest murmur. The numbness is sweeping over all of him now, like a coldness reaching from somewhere behind him deep into him. And while he thinks it’s coming from all over, it pulses in his right shoulder like red hot heat the adrenaline is wearing off and it is hurting more and more by the second. “You’re… F.B.I.”
Why didn’t he tell him?
A little voice tells him, Because you were a piece on the board. He sways a little forward, feeling sick. “You’re… covert operative.”
“Yeah. Gold stars for you. Very smart.” The words come out quick, half-hearted, as Lars drops to the floor with him. His hand claws against his jeans and drags the listening device from his boot.
It’s the noise that brings Niklas briefly back to seeing him. It’s the sound of smashing beneath a bootheel. “And that’s not ever going to be used in the records, so- Jesus, you’ve been shot,” he says as he turns to him, both hands coming onto his shoulder, pressing there. “Aside from your shoulder, are you hurt anywhere else? Nikky? Fuck, talk to me.” He’s breathless-sounding. Anxious.
“Why?” he whispers through staccato gasps, watching the man split into an apparition of double vision and narrow, like a picture at the end of a dark, tunnel. Our Father who art in heaven... He doesn’t know if he’s talking or thinking it. He can feel his heartbeat swinging like a distant thrumming of war drums.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
He eyes the remnants of the shattered surveillance device just beyond Lars’ shoulder. He wonders why the man did that. Does he not want this exchange to be recorded? Immortalized? He might die, and his doings may forever be obfuscated… for some reason, in the haze of thought, the idea very nearly infuriates him.
“Nikky, hey, we can’t stay here,-”
Lars’ arms are firm and smell of cigarettes. And for the first time in his life, they’re a comfort unlike anything he’s ever known. He opens his mouth and inhales, and acid finds its way on out. He barely tastes the bile on his lips as the heat rises to his head. “God forgive me,” he hears his own voice over Lars’ incomprehensible speech- it’s like a voice piercing through the cotton in his ears and the constant ringing. The gunshots, long past, echo themselves over and over and Lars presses him hard against him. His hands still ache from where he handled the razor too hard, and he feels it more, even, than the bullet wound. “God forgive me. Where is He?”
“Where’s who?” Lars’ voice barely reaches him. “You’re in shock. Fuck.”
He finds himself too incoherent for prayer. It’s only seconds before he’s yanked out of his body altogether.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Three packs in four hours. I think that’s a new record,” Rayleigh observes nonchalantly, as if the pile of papers in her hands isn’t heavy for even her. He can see that little tweak of strain in her eye. “The complimentary hospital water and coffee diet really becomes you, Lars.” She looks around discreetly
, sarcastically really, as if anyone would be listening to them in the ambulance entrance. She knows him too well; she found him just by tracking down the closest and most secluded place to light up. “I used to date a guy here. If you’re nicer to the nurses, you might even get a bagel and some of the real coffee they keep in the staff room.”
He leans against the building and watches the cherry, a star in the starless night. He still hasn’t washed all the blood off the front of his shirt, ignored the free change of clothes a braver nurse offered up. “I might, yeah.” He doesn’t even remember driving to the hospital.
They stand side by side right in front of a ditch littered with the history of his past four hours. Rayleigh is obviously trying not to look like she’s watching him too closely. “Anyway, this is all the paperwork you’re going to have to put in. I got it printed for you like you asked, but you’re really gonna need to report in tonight or tomorrow. Have you got a bag for all this?” She’s met with dazed silence. “Right, guess you don’t. Well, I’m going to put these down and I’m going home.” She snorts a little, crouching down and dumping them on the ground. “Jay sends her regards. I think.”
“Jay,” he tastes the name thoughtfully, thinking back on the girl. It’s been a while since Uncle Lars the Secret Agent stopped in- years.
An ambulance pulls in, wailing, but they both watch with half-lidded eyes as another emergency is wheeled in at breakneck speed and the glass doors close again. And just like that the silence, the regular city echo, falls over again and a chilly breeze blows over them both. “How old is that girl again?”
Rayleigh’s lips quirk up in a half-smile and she looks down. “Fifteen.”
“Heh. Fifteen. She must give you a goddamn heart attack running around at that age.” It’s the closest way he knows to a thank you at this hour in this haze of exhaustion. Cigarettes already have his nerves buzzing over the constant thrumming in his head telling him to rest.
“She does her part,” she admits, “but you’re doing a better job right now, I think. Do your paperwork, okay, Lars? And get some sleep.” When she gets nothing but silence again, she huffs, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Your paperwork’s gonna blow away. Lars? Damn you,” she mutters, leaning down to heave up the block of papers again. “Give me your keys, I’m putting them in your car.”
Half-heartedly, he fishes his keys from his pocket and place them in her proffered hands.
“It’s gonna be sitting unlocked, so get back and report in as soon as you can, okay?”
He doesn’t even notice she’s left until about five minutes later, when another ambulance comes shrieking in and he realizes she’s not by his side to watch it happen. The cigarette burns out, hot against his fingers, and he drops it into the pit of the ditch and ambles back inside, ignoring the gurney and team of paramedics sweeping past him with their next case. The State vs. Death. Location, Couer County Hospital.
He meets the girl in the lobby, and it’s not hard to spot her at all- still in her barista uniform at eight in the evening, though wrapped in some god-awful muddy green scarf and flicking between the pages of some lousy paperback like she just can’t conjoin a sentence split by two pages for the life of her. Not that he’s any better- he’s standing there with his car keys in hand and his phone, his real phone, fresh from a call with his boss and a scolding he microslept through and blood still on his shirt. It’s already turning brown with age.
He looks at her. “You worked at the Ishmael,” he observes, slowly, wondering if this is real at all. He’s so tired that she sways a little in his vision.
She looks up, seizes him with eyes so wide and green that a moment Lars is certain he’s on something, and it isn’t his usual shit. Nicotine poisoning, maybe. The paperback claps shut between her hands, and it’s with a clipped, contemptuous that she says, “You- you’re a user.”
“What?” he squints, touching his lips and looking to his own nicotine-stained fingers.
She raises a pale finger to point at his forearms, bared where he’s rolled up his sleeves. Trackmarks, he thinks, annoyed. Fuck, whatever. “I know drug abusers when I see them. Are - are you L.V.? The guy who sent those flowers?”
He frowns at her animosity, a little woken up by it. “One and only Lars Verdura-Cromwell at your service,” he mutters, massaging the back of his neck and ambling into a seat one beat over from her. “Who’s asking?” he asks as he watches some unnamed soap play by on the hospital television on mute. A dance of colors, that’s all it is. Just like the rest of this damned place.
She leans over to get a good look at him. “Is that his blood on you? Mr. Baranov’s?”
“I don’t have to answer that,” he mutters, “the police have told you everything you need to know.”
“No, they didn’t tell me anything,” she says, sounding despairing now, talking faster. “So is it his? On your shirt? Are you the one who hit him? Did you hurt him? Hey... Hey, I’m talking to you... What have you done to my boss?”
Oh boy. He groans a little into his hand, but it comes out partially as a yawn. “Do you see the bruise on my face right here, sweetheart? And this crooked fucking nose?” he says, pointing to the swollen flesh he knows is there. He doesn’t dare touch it- he’s made that mistake accidentally enough times before. Just brushing it while taking down that kid Etburn made him see stars for a while. “Your boss boy planted that on me. But otherwise we are very much in love, Miss...” he looks at her for a moment, squinting through his irritated contacts for a nameplate, “...Ginger. Whatever your name is.”
“Viola.” The hateful look on her face says she’s not quite satisfied.
Lars frown and turns away, blinking blearily as he checks the wall clock. “Viola it is. Aren’t visiting hours supposed to be over?”
She looks down. “I want to make sure he’s okay.” There’s a pregnant pause, filled only by the sound of the nurses and doctors running to and fro from whatever it is they’re up to. It seems like a slow night for the hospital. “I mean... You’re here too.”
“He’s my case,” he says acidly, even though it’s a lie. His case is over- it’s Swiss cheese in the morgue, and soon enough, he’ll be plucked from the jaws of this city and placed somewhere else. And that’s if he’s lucky. He feels her still staring at him, judging. “Look, Missy, I’m a fed- and your boss got caught in some nasty business with the local mob. Okay?”
She nods, eyebrows furled at this news. “Niklas wouldn’t ever associate with those l-lowlives.”
He gives a bark of a laugh at that, though it scrapes on his tired throat. “Nikky was a mix of unlucky and unwise as far as fight-picking went.” And driven, pushed to the edge by a dozen meddling hands. And God what a sight it was. He rests his chin in his hand and shuts his eyes, going back to that moment finding him in the carnage. The look in his eye was primal, so cut off from the rest of the world he might as well have been looking down from heaven, but the blood was all over his face.
“You can’t have been any good. I can see it on you.”
Decisively, he pushes himself to stand and wanders over to crouch in front of the girl. He doesn’t care how she flinches to be this close to him- he’s used to that. “Viola, right?” he asks. “Your boss is in a veritable shitstorm right now. But no amount of waiting or judging an agent of the law for fucking him-” it brings him ever so much satisfaction to see her flinch at that- “none of that shit is going to suture up his bullet wound. Your shop is so finished the cops are gonna be on it like maggots on a corpse- that is, if the mob doesn’t get at it first with arson. And Niklas Baranov?” he reaches in, hand rising to push her to look at him when she turns away. “Nikky will never live again without looking over his shoulder for someone trying to kill him unless he’s got my help- federal help. Let me do you this kindness, sweetheart, that I’m sure nobody else has done, because you’re a pretty little thing and I’m sure you think you have a chance: Go home. Get over him, get a new job selling organic cereal or some s
hit. Face like that and you’ll do just fine.”
He thumbs her cheek, feeling the heat rise beneath those freckles- rage or embarrassment, he can’t tell, he doesn’t care. He draws back and straightens up, smiling-
And Viola is on him next with a fist out of hell. The punch comes straight into his solar plexus, knocking him blind and crouching in the hospital lobby. “You’re wrong,” she says, voice a cloudy pitch coming in from above him, “you’re wrong, and I d-don’t care that I just hit you. You deserve it. You shouldn’t even be in my boss’s life.”