“Keep them busy!” A horribly familiar voice called out from the entry.
“Carmine,” I grunted. “GOD dammit.”
“Who?” Crina’s hands were shaking, but she checked and took position like a soldier. East Germany. Of course.
“He’s—” Shots rang out, deafening, and then the machine guns. The guys at the door were taking turns: two guys firing, two guys reloading. “—a spook! Go to the bar, get Vassily. I’ll cover you!”
Her eyes widened even more, but this table wasn’t big enough for the pair of us. Bullets chewed up the sides, spraying wood past us in a stinging cloud. The bar was safer. I backed up in a crouch as Crina kicked her heels off and hitched the hem of her short silk dress up to her waist so she could move. She crawled around me and then dashed low to the ground as I knelt up and fired over the table, drawing the next hail of bullets over my head. I wouldn’t be far behind her: the firing squad was advancing, fanning out to start a search of the tables closest to the entry.
There was no time for fear. I pulled out my pocket mirror and looked around the edge of the table. Mikhail lay still on the ground, his swept-back hair a wet and bloody sprawl on the carpet. Worse was Carmine, bent in deep concentration around his pentacle ring. I felt something buckle and twist in the room, like my ribs were sucking in towards the inside of my chest. Carmine was the nexus of a small storm that rumbled, darkening the air around him as it began to coalesce into large, canine forms.
There was nothing we had that could stop those things once he got them started. But what did I have to head him off? I looked down at the Wardbreaker, its engraved glyphs of power. If I could defuse a ward, I could break a spell, but I needed the sacrifice. Death was everywhere, but not death spoken with the words of power I needed. Which left me.
Broken glass was scattered everywhere on the floor around me. With full intent to suffer, I seized a shard of it and stabbed it into my knee, the one that was still healing. The pain was raw and hot: I screamed, fighting to focus all my rage, all my pain, into the blood that burst out, and clapped the gun down against the fresh wound.
Blood whipped out into fine tendrils that wrapped into the grooves along the sides of the barrel, loading the charge with a ferocity and concreteness I had never felt before, a real push, like a hand behind the bullet as I reared up, took aim, and fired straight at Carmine’s smarmy fucking face.
The bullet blew out with a sucking sound I’d never heard before, a phwoomf of backed-up force, and Carmine threw his hands up with a shout as the countermagic I’d spent so many patient years cultivating, sacrificing to, broke the spell he’d been weaving and sent him stumbling back. Whatever he'd cried out, it spun a kinetic web of force in a moment. The bullet zinged off his Phitonic shield and shattered it.
Crina, George, and Lazarus came up blazing from behind the bar, picking off two guys too slow to sense the shift in the battle. In between bursts, I heard shouts and screams from out in the hall behind the Manellis. The guards were here. The Manellis fell back as one: I got up to one leg to try to blast Carmine again but dropped when I saw him throw something into the room. It hit the wall and bounced with a tinny metallic sound. A grenade? I covered the head of the man next to me, burying my face against the floor with my arm wrapped around my ear.
The air sucked in as it detonated, spraying metal and wood over our heads. A sharp pain lanced through the left side of my face, but when I rolled up and felt for blood or a wound, there was nothing. My ear was ringing, and everything on that side sounded fuzzy. I could smell smoke, and it was getting hot...The building wouldn’t burn down, but the inside of the room would, and that was enough to kill the lot of us.
Lev stumbled across to me from around the curve of the bar, milk white with shock. “Vas... Vassily’s down. Go. Go get him and the women out of here, back to New York. I’ll deal with this.”
“Avtoritet, I can’t leave you here.” Even if Lev was trying to set me up, the old loyalty resurged in the heat of the moment.
“That’s an order,” he snapped. “Vassily, out. Get him to a hospital if you have to. Out!”
Couldn’t argue with that. I hobbled up, stumbling when I put weight on my leg and it nearly crumpled. Oh right: the glass. I pulled it free without feeling anything other than a pinching pain, put it in my mouth, and sucked the blood off it. I put pressure over the wound as I went to join the others. It wasn’t too deep, but it was bleeding.
The beefy bodyguard was dead behind the bar. Crina was there, putting pressure on Vassily’s leg with a pile of blood-soaked linen napkins as he clutched at the floor in a silent rictus of agony. Vanya cowered with the blonde and Katerina, who was sobbing hysterically in his arms.
“We have to get him out. There’s stairs down to the boardwalk!” I searched for something to use to tie more napkins to my leg. The blonde girl, wooden and doll-like with shock, silently held out her scarf. I bound my wound, stuffed my gun back under my jacket, and squatted on my heels as I slung Vassily up over my shoulders. “Up, up, up!”
Crina didn’t say a word. Her face was a mask of determination as she took Vassily's other arm and helped to bear his weight. Vanya and the girls hauled up to their feet, and the six of us ran for the balcony, stepping over a dead dealer and racing for the outside door. The emergency gate that led to the shore was easy enough to open, but our doom lay on the other side of the boardwalk: a flashing wall of blue and red sirens.
“Anya, go get the car!” Crina said. “They won’t look twice at you and Vanya if you don’t run. Katya, you can spot for them. We’ll meet you on the other side of the block.”
Katerina didn’t hesitate: she gave a nod and scrambled off. Anya was so stunned that she simply obeyed, stumbling down the stairs with Vanya’s hand clutched in hers. He was wheezing like a pug, but he managed to shove his gun into my hands on the way past and half-run, half-wobble after her. Crina gave me a nod over Vassily’s shoulder, and we dragged him swearing onto the sand, into the shadows, and waded our way up the mostly oblivious beachfront.
“Mother of FUCK!” Vassily spat aloud as soon as we were far enough away from people. He was hopping, almost exceeding us in speed. If I could give the coke credit for one thing, it was its anesthetic effect. “Fuck fuck fuck!”
“I haven’t had a gunfight that good since I left Zagreb!” Crina said brightly, her voice high and shrill with stress.
We rounded the corner of the building to find Katerina hopping from foot to foot, stockings ripped, clutching her shoes by the straps. She waved us forward, and we made our way another half a block to the waiting car. Vassily swore angrily as we stuffed him into the backseat, head-first. We scrambled in after him, and the car roared off into the night as I slammed the door behind us. Vanya was in the front: it was Vassily, me, and the three women in the back.
“My leg,” Vassily gasped. He reached down to paw at the enormous spreading bloodstain, pale and sweaty. “My motherfucking leg.”
“Hands off.” I rapped his knuckles and threw back my jacket, using it to put full-body pressure on the entry point. “You’re lucky it didn’t blow out the other side.”
“Am I... is it..?” His voice was high with fear.
“You’re not bleeding to death,” I said, firmly. If only every spook had Lev’s ability to magically calm people. “You’ll be fine.”
“Oh my god,” Katerina whispered. “Oh my god. Misha’s dead.”
Anya said nothing. She curled into the corner of the leather seat and stared out the window.
Vassily grunted, writhing. The smell of blood was thick, turning the air heavy and humid. “Motherfucking shitcocking pieces of SHIT! That HURTS!”
I breathed in, out. Calm, I told myself. You’re calm.
“We’ll be back in New York soon, Vassily. Just hold on.” Crina’s voice was full of barely concealed panic. She had kept it together while the adrenaline ran high, but now the rush was subsiding, she was feeling it. She might have seen some shit in her time, but she
wasn’t a hardened muzhiki off the street.
“In two and a half fucking hours, if we don’t get pulled over.” Vassily growled, face contorting. “How many did the guidos lose? There was five of them. What happened to George?”
“Eight of them. And I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t have time to count. But you know what? If he's alive, George will think we set this up.”
“Oh god,” Katerina said. “He will.”
Vassily looked up at me in alarm. “Jesus Christ. You’re right.”
I was trying not to focus on how my jacket was soaking through with Vassily’s blood. “Even if they realize that we did nothing, then they may use it to take the lion’s share from the Organizatsiya.”
“I’ll kill ’em. We’ll kill the fucking lot of them.” Vassily lifted his voice to a near shout, calling through the tinted glass between the back of the car and the driver’s side. “And for fuck’s sake, Vanya, turn the radio on! I don’t want die with nothing to fucking listen to except my own goddamned whining!”
After a moment, Vanya complied, switching on to a station seemingly picked at random. Johnny Cash burst from the speakers above and behind us, halfway through Ring of Fire. Crina shook her head in dismay, while our driver pulled out of Atlantic City, gunning for the parkway and the distant hope of home.
Chapter 19
By the time we reached Vanya’s safe house, the sun had risen and the worst of Vassily’s bleeding had stopped. Crina and I hauled him out—grim, stoic, and pale—and helped him into the building.
“I still say we should be taking you to the hospital,” I said. “I can only do so much. You could get an infection, you could—”
“No. No fucking hospital,” he growled through gritted teeth. “You might as well just take me straight back to jail.”
“Can’t you just, like, fix it?” Vanya said. He was trailing behind us, mopping his face with a handkerchief, seemingly unaware that he was wiping someone’s blood onto himself.
Short of me sacrificing Vanya on the spot and hoping his saggy ass was enough to power the same kind of magic I’d used on Carmine’s goons, there wasn’t anything I knew that could help Vassily. “I left my magical leg-fixing wand in my other set of robes.”
Crina made a choked sound in the back of her throat. Vanya glared at me before kneeling down beside Vassily. “How’re you feeling, Zmechik?”
“Give me a shot of horilka and ask me after that.”
Already halfway to the back room, I stopped and turned. “No. No alcohol. You cannot drink.”
“Fucking hell.” Vassily looked up at me hollowly. “Do you know how much this hurts?”
No, I’d only had my knee smashed in with a baseball bat not half a week ago. Exasperated, I left in frustrated silence for the kitchen, pawing around the freezer for icepacks. I collected a pile of clean towels and then a folded sheet of plastic, the kind you used to line car trunks for transporting bodies. The plastic went down on the tiled floor. It was going to be a messy job. “Bring him over here.”
Crina and Vanya carried Vassily from the sofa to the sheet. By the time they laid him out, Vanya, sweating and red-faced, was puffing, and he wore a look of strain nearly equal to Vassily’s own. “Look uh... Alexi. You need any help? ’Cause blood and me don’t—”
“Yes. Get me the two chairs from the kitchen, please.” It was my turn to glare. No way in hell was he leaving now. The big man nodded, scruffing his hair, but he went off to get them anyway.
“Dreksnest,” Crina said, with feeling. She puffed a lock of sweaty hair from her face. She was bloody with small cuts and scratches, her dress ripped, her stockings ripped beyond recognition. Her hair hung raggedly around her face.
“I can handle this,” I said. “There’s an en suite in the last room down the hall, if you want to clean up.”
“Later. I’m fine.” She waved a hand. “What else do you need?”
“Make sure he stays here.” I snorted and stood.
“Fuck you. Asshole.” Vassily rubbed his face, sniffing. “Can I at least have a smoke?”
“No.”
Vassily, too exhausted to argue, nodded and slumped back down.
I got the largest medical kit we had from the back room and opened it up, extending the metal trays, and used the kitchen sink to strip my gloves and scrub up. I came back with them still damp, shaking them to dry. Crina went to do the same thing while I got my tools ready.
“Hey...” Vassily looked at me dully. The shadows around his deep-set eyes had spread, dark with stress and pain. “I don’t even know what happened back there, Lexi. Us fighting.”
I had a good notion what had happened and was about to tell him so when Vanya reentered. He grunted, setting the chairs near our place. “Fucking drama queen mobsters, haha. You handle this. I wanna try Lev’s office, see if he’s okay.”
“Fine.” Crina would be a better assistant anyway. I exhaled heavily and pulled out two pairs of latex gloves. I covered my hands and held the other pair out for Crina as she returned.
“Thank God they weren’t throwing hollowpoints around, or I wouldn’t have a leg.” Vassily shifted on the tarp with a grunt of discomfort. “Can you get it out?”
I made a motion with my shoulders, agreement, and then took up the short serrated scissors in the kit. First, I cut high around the tacky flat stain, the dry blood a palm-sized spread through the dark fabric of his slacks. I used one of the small saline bottles in the kit to dampen the stiff bloody fabric. “Crina, in the bathroom, you will find a spray bottle for the plants. I need it half-full of water from the kettle. Cold water, not boiling.”
Crina heaved up with a sigh. “Sure thing, Doctor Sokolsky.”
Under other circumstances, it might have brought a smile, but I was far too busy judging the wound. It had no streakiness, no signs of infection—yet. Vanya left in the midst of the exam, his actions audible from the bedroom.
“Like I was saying... look. We’re both exhausted. This is all about being tired and fucked up.” Vassily’s eyes reddened as he stared fixedly at the studio lights above us. “You know it is. I don’t want to fight with you. We can sort shit out. We’ve done it before.”
I glared back down at him, unwrapping a needle and two syringes, a drip bag, tubing—the paraphernalia of the medic, almost as familiar as the tools of war. The gun and knife were not dissimilar to the syringe and scalpel. “Maybe.”
Vassily frowned, pushing some of his hair over his face, back over his tacky forehead. When he spoke, his voice was low, soft enough that Crina wouldn’t be able to hear. “Look, I’m sorry I put words in your mouth. I respect you, Lexi. You’re my main man, my brother. I don’t know why the fuck you weren’t named standing Avtoritet.”
“Because I put my father down.” I set out a small surgical tray. Tweezers, forceps, gauze. I poured antiseptic over everything that needed sterilizing and left them to stew while I prepared two syringes of different antibiotics and a bag of fluids. “The rest of them thought I was out to steal their positions when I killed him.”
“Well, yeah.” Vassily turned his head so he could look at me, his blue eyes dull. “But like I said back home. You’re the hardest man in this crew besides Nic. You came out like fucking Rambo tonight.”
“If I don't finish the job I started, it won't matter. Not that you care about that.” My voice was tense, and I barely stopped the next words that wanted to bubble out from my lips. That I wasn’t sure I wanted any of this, anymore. The Organizatsiya. The fighting and the politics. I had always disdained the infighting, and because I’d tried not to get involved, I’d stayed alive. But now? It was wearing me out faster than my body and mind could keep up.
“Look, I do care. You didn't tell me any of this shit. You didn't tell me about the break-in, nothing. I’ll speak for you.” Vassily’s eyes darkened for a moment. “We’ll stop Lev from arranging whatever he’s arranging, and I’ll speak for you with Sergei.”
“We don’t even know what Lev an
d Jana and everyone else are—”
We fell silent again as Crina came back.
She set the spray bottle down with a thump. “Done. You need anything else?”
Levelly, I looked up at her face. “Yes. Sit beside him, on the other side. You will need to hold him down.”
The operation couldn’t be done with any strong painkillers: not with coke in his system. Vanya hid while the screams pierced the air of the apartment, but it wasn’t long before I had the bullet out, the fluids and antibiotics in, and Vassily was sleeping off his blood loss. Crina was as exhausted as I was by the time we were done: we went to the bedroom, where she got the bed and I took the floor.
I got a couple hours of sleep before I roused at seven, restless and hypervigilant. With nothing else to do, I started cleaning the kitchen with compulsive fervor. Bagging, trashing garbage, sweeping, and spraying. I scrubbed obsessively at spots of dirt on the countertop, and it took several minutes of them refusing to budge for me to realize they were a part of the granite patterning.
An hour later, I called Mariya’s house. My gut was tight and fluttering empty. How the hell was I going to tell her what had happened to her brother?
“Alexi, thank God,” she said. Her voice was thick with relief. “Did you find him?”
“Yes, but Maritka, it’s… I do not have good news,” I said tensely. “He was shot last night.”
There was a long pause. “Oh god. Alexi—”
“He’s alive, just injured. It hit him in the thigh,” I cut her off, before she could wind herself up. “All things considered, he was lucky. I’ve done everything I can for it, but he won’t go to the hospital.”
“How’s he going to get to the parole center?” Her voice was high and frightened. “They’ll know he was shot.”
“I know. I know.” I paused, debating briefly on what else to say. I decided, as I usually did, on the blunt and total truth. “This… it isn’t all that’s wrong with him. I found him passed out in Vanya’s bathtub yesterday. He’s been doing a lot of cocaine, and he’s got a problem.”
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