by Glen Frost
It had taken less than three seconds for Piotr to empty the weapon’s magazine, and a further five for him to realize what the dry clicking of the trigger meant. When the same cop called out, “Drop it!” for the second time, only this time sounding infinitely more angry than before, he reluctantly obeyed. The pistol hit the sidewalk, where the falling snowflakes began to cover it over.
His eyes focused on the two cops, advancing grimly toward him along the sidewalk. No, he realized, blinking his wind-chilled eyes to clear them, that wasn’t right…only one of them was coming toward him, his weapon held in shaking, outstretched hands. His partner was laying in the snow, slumped over against a parking meter. One hand was clutched to his chest, trying unsuccessfully to stem the flow of bright red blood that one of Piotr’s stray rounds had unleashed.
“Hands in the air, you bastard!” yelled the cop that was still on his feet. “You shot Jimmy, you fucking piece of shit!”
Piotr could tell just how angry the man was, and couldn’t really blame him. He hadn’t meant to shoot his partner…he’d panicked, and the pig had gotten in the line of fire. How was that his fault, though? Groaning at the pain caused by his broken clavicle, the pimp worked his way up until he was sitting on his ass. He tried to raise his hands, to show the cop that they were empty, but the right arm stubbornly refused to move; waves of searing, white hot pain shot through his shoulder when he tried forcing it to obey his will.
“I said, hands in the fucking air!” The cop kicked him in the face. Piotr saw it coming and managed to turn his head to the side at the last moment, but it still managed to shatter his cheekbone and cut his lip, sending a thin trickle of blood running down his chin.
He felt the cold, hard barrel of the cop’s handgun digging into the skin of his temple.
“D-d-don’t shoot…” Piotr’s teeth were chattering now, along with the rest of his trembling body. He kept telling himself that it was just the cold, not fear, that made him shake, but deep down he knew it for the lie that it was. The shot cop wasn’t moving, which meant that more than likely, Piotr’s stray shot had killed him. This cop might just put one in his head right now, and be done with it. “It was an accident, I am so, so sorry…”
“That’s just too damned bad,” the cop bit off each word through gritted teeth, “because Jim Daniels was a good man, you fuck. Not a piece of shit like you. A. Good. Man.”
He emphasized each word with a jab of the gun. The foresight tore the skin at Piotr’s temple, but the pimp didn’t notice. He was too busy pissing himself, sending a stream of hot, yellow liquid into the seat of his pants. The urine made the snow steam and melt around his crotch.
“Please…I…don’t want to die,” Piotr begged, layering on the waterworks as strongly as he dared. The acting wasn’t all that hard, because he really didn’t want to die.
“Well, that’s just too fucking bad,” the cop roared, his finger tightening on the trigger, “because you’re sure as shit going to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Anya had worked her way around the back of the parked car, and then the three that were parked nose-to-tail behind it. Finally, she reached the body of the shot police officer.
She was surprised to find that he wasn’t dead, despite the fact that one of Piotr’s bullets had hit him in the chest. The hand that he’d been using to try and stem the flow of blood now flopped limply at his side. His skin was as pale as the falling snow, and probably every bit as cold too…just as Anya’s was.
“What is your name?” she asked, with more tenderness than she realized she was still capable of.
His eyelids fluttered weakly open. He stared at her, moving nothing but his eyes. Finally he said, “Jim…Jim…Daniels. What’s..yours…?”
“Anya.”
The man watched her, and offered her a little smile. She smiled in return, and some instinct made her reach out to take his hand in hers. Just as she had expected, it was ice colder…but her own was colder. He squeezed her hand, seeking some last bit of human contact as the life slowly drained out of his eyes.
Wait a minute…my mask is still down…why isn’t he terrified of me?
“He sees you as you really are,” said the voice from behind her. Anya turned to see Emily standing there in the snow behind her, watching them both with eyes that seemed infinitely sad. “Because he is on the cusp of death. He isn’t seeing your body. He’s seeing you. The real you.”
“What do I look like, Jim?” Anya whispered.
When the dying man didn’t reply at first, she thought that he must have passed on, but finally he whispered, “Beautiful. So beautiful…”
Jim’s body went slack, slumping just a little deeper into the snow. The blood stopped pulsing from his chest wound, and Anya’s enhanced hearing told her that his heart had finally stopped beating. She hoped that whatever came next for him, he would find some measure of peace at last. This was no place for anybody to die, gunned down on the sidewalk by a murderous stranger on a bitterly cold winter’s night.
The sound of somebody being violently sick interrupted her train of thought. Turning, she saw Lydia standing in the middle of the street, miming the action of putting two fingers down her throat and throwing up. The effect was ruined slightly by the occasional passing car as it moved through her body without stopping.
“Oh, fucking please,” the Goth girl made a face.
Anya stood up slowly, turning to face the pair of ghosts. “What do you want?” she asked quietly, her words almost lost on the howling Denver winds.
“It’s not too late,” Emily pleaded, spreading her hands. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to kill anybody else…”
“Bullshit!” Lydia spat angrily. “This is the end of the road, honey. This is what it’s all been about, hasn’t it? Revenge.” She pointed in the direction of the pimp, who was now cowering with the detective’s gun at his temple. “Now get over there and claim it before that cop loses his shit and does it for you!”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you stay like this!” To emphasize her point, Lydia jabbed an open hand in Anya’s direction. “Do you really wanna walk the Earth in that state, waiting for that miserable piece of filth to die of natural causes? Because if you do, honey, then you just go right on ahead. You’ll lose out on your revenge, and at the end of the day, he’ll die of old age, or get offed by some other gang-banger…and when that happens, you’ll be ours anyway. The Devil always gets his due. Always.”
The words hit Anya hard. After all she had gone through, the abuse and the murder, to let him get away…and then the rage was back in full force, filling her mind with images of tearing Piotr limb from limb, inflicting countless untold agonies upon him until death finally brought him sweet relief.
Like Hell!
Fists clenched, she began to stride toward the wounded pimp, with nothing but murder on her mind.
From somewhere behind her, she barely heard Emily whisper, “Think of little Darya.”
And she did.
“You should see to your friend.”
Piotr’s eyes went wide, but Anya wasn’t talking to him. DiTirro’s finger was pulling about two-and-a-half pounds of pressure on a trigger that took three pounds to fire. Based on how violently that finger was shaking, even the slightest twitch would cause him to ventilate the pimp’s brains through the opposite side of his head. The cop looked slowly upward. When he caught sight of Anya’s face, his own froze into a blank, expressionless mask.
“She was telling the truth,” he said simply. It was a plain statement of fact, rather than an effort to come to terms with the nightmare visage he now found himself confronted with. “You really did come back from the dead.”
“Yes,” Anya agreed.
“What…what was it like?” The cop sounded genuinely curious.
“It hurt,” she said simply. “A lot.”
He took a moment to digest that, but never let up the tension on the trigger. Piotr’s eyes dart
ed everywhere, desperately searching the night for the sight of approaching police lightbars. None of the traffic on Colfax was slowing down, let alone stopping. The snow was getting worse, and visibility was down to maybe two or three feet. The drivers were probably all hunched forward over their steering wheels, trying their damnedest not to run into the car in front.
“Your friend is dead,” Anya said awkwardly, searching for the right words. She finally settled for, “I’m sorry.”
A single tear rolled down the cop’s cheek. He cuffed it away angrily with his free hand. The other arm straightened, as he took a step back a little further out of splatter range. “First Forsberg. Now Jimmy. You’re next, you fuck. Say your prayers…”
Piotr closed his eyes. His bladder was going full stream now, the steaming wet patch spreading over the front of his pants.
“Wait,” Anya said quietly.
Both men blinked, looking at her in surprise. The cop winced, unable to conceal his revulsion at her brutalized face. Piotr couldn’t believe his luck at this apparent stay of execution.
“Fucker needs to get what’s coming to him,” the detective said resolutely.
“Yes, he does. Now go and take care of your friend.” When the cop looked uncertain, she added, “Your hands should remain clean. Let me take the trash out…”
DiTirro thought it over for a moment, taking in the state of Anya’s ruined face. “You’ve got five, maybe six minutes after I call this in.” A bullet was way too good for a piece of shit who was capable of that, he reasoned, and with a nod he holstered his pistol and trudged across the sidewalk to take care of Jim’s body.
“No,” Piotr implored, reaching out with his one good arm to beseech the cop not to leave him with this thing. “Please…she’ll kill me—”
“Oh, relax, Piotr,” Anya purred, taking his chin in her hand and tilting his head upward so that his gaze met hers. “I’m not going to kill you…at least, not if you give me what I want.”
“Anything, Anya! Anything!” The whining and wheedling of the so-called ‘man’ sickened her, but Anya maintained a straight face. She didn’t bother masking her features again, however; the horrifying effect of leaving her true face exposed was too pleasing. She was very much enjoying watching the pimp quake in fear of her. “Just tell me what it is that you want.”
“Information. Just one single piece of information. That is all.”
“And you will let me live?” Piotr asked, desperately hoping that she was telling him the truth.
“I will let you live. I promise.”
“Alright. I will tell you whatever it is that you want to know.”
“Good. That is very good.” She smiled, which gave her mouth the effect of a death’s head rictus. “I want the name and address of your boss. The man you work for.”
“Mr. Guskov?”
“If that is his name, then yes. Mr. Guskov’s address please. And do not even think of lying to me, Piotr. I will know if you lie, and I will kill you for it. Slowly.”
She could practically read the pimp’s mind right now. This man — this Guskov — was a human trafficker, not just small time like Piotr, but one who did more than charm and travel back and forth between countries. No, this would be the puppet master, the one who actually pulled the strings. Which meant that he would be the one who could bring her precious little Darya to this country…if he were sufficiently motivated, of course.
Reaching into his pocket, Piotr pulled out his wallet and a cheap pen that he’d gotten for free at a casino in Black Hawk. Despite the pain from his broken bones, he was able to extract a scrap of paper and scrawled down Mr. Guskov’s address. Anya searched his face for any sign of deceit. When she didn’t find any, she stuffed the paper into the pocket of her white shirt. Her smile grew wider. Now she had what she wanted, it was time to make good on her promise.
Grabbing a fistful of Piotr’s tousled dark hair, she dragged the injured pimp into the closest alley. When he wailed, she punched him in the crotch, hard enough to rupture a testicle. The resultant scream was shrill and plaintive, which made it music to her ears.
“The big, bad man, Piotr,” Anya laughed as she pulled his struggling form into the dark center of the alley, which was formed by two businesses that had closed for the night several hours before. “Not so much, I think.”
“You promised!” the pimp whimpered. “You promised that you would not kill me!”
“And unlike you, my dear Piotr, you will find that when it is given, my word is good. I will not kill you.”
“But—” He sounded confused, wondering why she had dragged him into this dark and isolated place, if not to kill him.
“I’m just going to hurt you, Piotr. But you will live a good, long time.”
Anya saw the dim outlines of two broken house bricks laying next to a guttering drainage pipe. Bending down to pick them up, she placed one stilettoed boot sole on the pimp’s belly to pin him down, and then slid the two bricks up the insides of his legs until they were resting between his inner thighs, as high as they could possibly go.
Then she slammed them together, hard enough to break one in half. It had been the anvil to the other brick’s hammer, and in the middle were Piotr’s already-traumatized testicles. They splattered inside his ball-sack like a pair of over-ripe plums.
“Oh, do stop crying, you little bitch,” Anya said disgustedly, exerting enough pressure with her boot to keep him supine. “You can live perfectly well without those, and besides, it will prevent you breeding if you ever get up the courage to put that pathetic little dick inside a woman in the future.”
Piotr was actively crying now, the tears running down his face and into his nose. The only thing coming out of his throat was a strangled mewling noise, but without any intelligible words in there. Quick as a flash, Anya straddled him, grabbing his shirt in her fists and hauling him to stand limply on his feet. His one working hand was pawing frantically at the bleeding mass between his legs, where his ball-sack had ruptured and was even now leaking blood and other gelatinous fluids into his piss-soaked pants.
“It’s not like you couldn’t live without them,” Anya added, sounding bright and breezy. “Now, I wonder what else you can manage to live without…”
She knew perfectly well what. The next time Piotr opened his eyes, she jammed the index finger of her right hand into his left eye. The globe ruptured, dumping a huge spurt of vitreous fluid onto her knuckles. Piotr tried to jerk his head back reflexively, but the dead hooker was too fast for him; with her free hand, she grabbed the back of his head and held it rigidly in place. Her finger continued to root around inside his eye socket, scraping against the smooth bone of the inner orbit. The eye was nothing more than pulp now, pouring blood and tissue down the front of his face.
Piotr suddenly remembered how to scream again.
That was when Anya kissed him, moving in with her lipless mouth to intercept the wide-open chasm of Piotr’s own. She bit down hard upon his tongue, holding it fast between the remnants of her own gums, and with a jerk of her head she tore it free of his mouth. Blood splattered across her face, shooting up her nostrils and into her eager mouth, where it ran down the back of her throat, revitalizing her powers and renewing her strength. His one remaining eye was wide and staring like that of a madman. Anya plucked it out between her thumb and forefinger, keeping it whole and intact this time. Blood wept from the second empty socket, like the holy stigmata she had seen on the statues in church when she was a young girl, but Anya knew that there was nothing either holy or innocent about this piece of filth.
Anya took hold of Piotr’s belt and the top of his pants. With a single skillful yank, she ripped them off his body, like a magician whipping a tablecloth away without upsetting any of the china. Grasping a knot of his hair with one hand, Anya forced Piotr’s head down until he was bending over at the waist. Gravity caused even more blood to pour from his mouth and eye sockets, but at least this way she knew tha
t he wouldn’t choke to death on it. She very much wanted him alive.
Taking down his Calvin Kleins with the other hand, Anya took the blood-slicked eyeball and rammed it between the two pale white cheeks of Piotr’s ass. With her questing, probing fingers, she was able to shove it a good four inches into his rectum, and though it did tear a fissure in his anus in the process, Anya was well aware that you couldn’t make an omelet without breaking an egg or two.
Besides, she reasoned, it would give the hospital resident a challenge, something new to remove from a human anus that they probably hadn’t seen lodged up there before. She laughed at the thought. Piotr, on the other hand, wasn’t capable of laughing any more: He retched and heaved, spattering the densely-packed snow with bright, fresh blood.
A set of flashing multi-colored lights appeared at the far end of the alley. Anya expected to see the cops, and so the orange and white colored Denver Paramedics ambulance surprised her a little, but she couldn’t have planned it any more perfectly if she’d tried. Denver had very good paramedics, or so she had been told, and she didn’t want Piotr dying on her any time soon. As long as he was alive, she didn’t have to pay off her debt to Lydia’s boss. Her soul remained her own, even if it was trapped in a decomposing shell like this.
No, blind, mute, impotent and anally violated, but not dead. That suited her perfectly.
Grabbing Piotr by the scruff of his neck and the back of his blood-soaked underwear, she hefted him into the air and then bowled him towards the ambulance. It was maybe forty feet away. Piotr hit the ground at ten feet or so with a yipe, then went on to slide the remaining thirty feet on the snow-covered surface. The first paramedic, climbing down carefully out of the driver’s side door, stopped dead in his tracks with body language that plainly conveyed, You have GOT to be shitting me…
She turned on her heel and began to walk, following the alley to its far end, where it became a three-way stop. Taking a right, she leaped up and over a nine foot high brick wall as though it wasn’t even there, her supernaturally enhanced strength recharged thanks to the big infusion of blood she had just gotten.