Dark Sun: Chapter 3

I touched the Wardbreaker to my lips, holstered it, and drew my second gun: a Ruger 22/45. There was no magic on this short-barreled, small-caliber suppressed pistol. It was a tool for killing. I stepped in over the mess into a white marble hallway. Gilt mirrors, bad art, more marble tables. A cat bolted from one room to another; a door slammed further back in the house. I followed the banging and swearing, hugging the wall and swinging into the bathroom door for concealment when Semyon's panicked clattering turned deadly quiet. The air of the apartment trembled with his terror.

"Get the fuck out!" He screamed from inside his bedroom, that most intimate of sanctuaries. "I know you're out there, you freak! Get out! I swear to god I'll kill you!"

I closed my eyes, focusing to sense for any more wards, but Semyon was out of magic and out of time. Cross-stepping, quiet, I caught an umbrella from a nearby rack and used it to depress the door handle. Before it was all the way down, the deafening rattle-roar of an AK-47 blasted through the door and the wall beside it, spraying wood and white paint chips into the air and shattering the mirror on the opposite wall. I let him unload, counting, and returned a single shot through the gaping splintered hole he'd left. There was a panicked sob; I turned and put a boot through the remains of the door, then sprinted to the other side. I had a brief vision of Semyon cowering by his bedside table, the AK jerking up over the edge of the mattress.

"AHHHH!" His scream was drowned out by the next volley. He swept the muzzle wildly, trying to shoot me through the walls. I pressed flat to the ground on my face, waiting. He emptied half the magazine this time. Running down the clock, waiting for the cops to arrive. A dozen of his neighbors were already on their phones.

"You know why I'm here, Semyon." I called. “You know what this means.”

"I'LL KILL YOU!" He shrieked from inside.

I glanced over at the broken mirror, and picked a few large shards from the ground. Threw them in. Semyon's reply was a burst that tore the bedsheets off his bed and sprayed foam into the air. His aim was too high. I waited for the guilty click of an empty magazine and threw myself around the edge of the door. Semyon had reached for a second gun, a pistol, but dropped it and cringed when I fired over his head. The strength was draining out of him. Semyon wasn't a strong man. He was a gem cutter and appraiser, a fussy white-collar who relied on men like me and Moni to do his dirty work and protect him. When I came around the end of the bed, he put his hands up by his shoulders and shrank away.

"A-Alexi, god... look look look, you know me, you KNOW me," he stammered. "I-I have money for you, lots of money. M-Money, under the bed. Take it, take it and I'll go! Away. Rome, T-Tel Aviv. I'll go and you can tell Lev-"

"That I let a snitch escape to Tel Aviv?" I kept the suppressor centered on his nose. "You betrayed him, Semyon. You ran your mouth to John Manelli, and he took that information straight to the FBI. There's a 'Russian mafia taskforce' now, Semyon. The Vigiles are getting involved, too. Your fault."

"You... you don't understand. You don't understand what's coming," he whispered. "If we don't... oh god. Look, I just need to talk to Lev, explain-"

"No, Semyon. You do not need to talk to Lev. He paid for you to come to America to help your people. To work. Not to rat us out to the Italians, and certainly not the Feds."

Semyon stared at the black mouth of the Ruger with tear-fringed, red-rimmed eyes.

"We shared our homes with you. He found you work. You prospered and built a business," I said. "You turned on him for money. Not for justice, some sense of displaced morality. You turned on him for money."

Tears leaked down Semyon's face. "Alexi Grigoriovich, I swear on my life. They made me trade with them. Th-they needed the jewels for… for something! One of them, he's a Spook like you! They made me, I-I didn't have a choice!"

Barely a year ago, New York had no 'Russian mafia'. We had operated as a nebulous, seemingly unconnected web of businessmen, racketeers, doctors, bookies, bouncers and lawyers. We kept the peace among ourselves and our communities, and the police never connected the dots - until Semyon Vochin. He had dealt with the Manelli family behind our backs, and the Manellis had passed a hot tip to the FBI. Like all the old Italian crime families, they had a strict code of honor they broke when it suited them and never worked with the law unless it was to undercut their rivals. And now the myth of a ‘Russian mafia’ was on the tongues of every Special Agent and Vigiles Inquisitor, as if we too had Al Capone-style families. We did not. Most of us weren’t even Russian, but Ukrainian.

"You chose to steal from Lev. You chose to trade with our enemies. The Manellis didn't compel you to betray your best friend, Semyon. You chose to."

"You don't understand-"

"I understand five men are dead because of you." I advanced slowly, backing him against the nightstand. Carefully. "So now I am here, the logical conclusion to the bad decisions you made. You have one final choice, Semyon. Die well, or die poorly."

His nostrils trembled. "Then tell Lev this from me. He works for the Devil, and if I did my part to fight this... this EVIL, I have earned my place with the angels."

"That’s rather dramatic." My aim did not waver.

Semyon's hand twitched toward the edge of the bed, the dull flash of metal underneath. I fired twice. Two pops, one to the cheek and one to the forehead. He crumpled like a doll to the floor.

I found the pistol he’d dropped and the cases of money under the bed: fifty thousand in cash, mixed fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. All new crisply minted government paper. I left the cases open, untouched, arranged on the end of the ruined mattress so they faced the doorway. Let the Feds find them, and wonder.

As I nosed back through the house, I heard a sound from the den. Nape prickling, I slid around the wall and around the corner, gun leveled. The cat who'd run from me was nosing at four lines of coke laid out on the coffee table, sniffing at them with her tail held high. She was little more than a kitten, a Siamese with pale grey points.

"Hey," I said. "Get away from that." It would kill her stone dead.

The cat's head turned. She leaped to the floor, a lithe ribbon of muscle and sleek fur, and trotted over to me with a friendly chirp. Before I could move away, she threw herself against my pants leg, arching and purring.

I looked down at her, grimacing, and holstered the Ruger. The fiber of my trousers were on her fur, now. I tried to step back, but she darted between my legs and rushed to the entryway, where she turned and let out a piercing yowl. Against my better judgement, I followed. "What?"

“Mrrraww!” The cat led me into the large, clean kitchen and paced around an empty dish of kibble crumbs.

The box of kibble was on the counter, hastily abandoned. So that’s what Semyon had been about to do before his death. With a pang of guilt, I took it and filled her bowl. "I see. I suppose you'll be taken to the pound once the pigs get here, won't you?"

The cat looked up at me, and for a moment, I was transfixed. Her eyes were a gray so pale they looked white. Just like mine.

"Mrrr-raow. Mrrrr." She ignored the food and came back to wind around my shins again.

I exhaled thinly through my nostrils as memories suddenly, sharply intruded into my mind and eyes and senses. A stifling hot basement with an old coal furnace. My father, leering, and the screams of cats. I flinched from them, face ticcing, and backed against the counter. The screams continued, wailing... the distant wail of approaching sirens.

No. No, not now. I looked down at the cat. She had moved back to her bowl, crunching away on her kibble. What if the cops shot her? If she was taken to the pound, would she be adopted, or euthanized?

I jerked my shoulders and forced myself to walk away, but only made it as far as the threshold before I realized the sound of her eating had stopped. I looked back and found her watching me, her white eyes wise and wide and innocent. If she feared her uncertain future, she showed no sign.

I wavered in place. The Siamese responded by flopping onto the floor and rolling to her side. When I hesitated, she squinted at me, kneading her paws against the air. Effortlessly manipulative.

Five minutes later, I scrambled back into the Jeep. Nic grunted with satisfaction, pulling out onto the road, then again with surprise when he noticed the squirming bundle in my arms. “The fuck is that?"

"Her name is Binah." I lay a gloved hand on her head, flattening her ears. Binah relaxed under the weight of my palm. “Don’t ask.”

"I told you not to take anything," Nic said flatly. The road was lighting up behind us, red and blue.

"I didn't," I replied. "She came of her own will."

"Uhn." Nic kept his headlights dark until we hit a busier road and merged in, just another car headed south toward Brooklyn. "You did the job?"

"Of course."

"And Moni?"

"A non-issue."

"Good," Nic replied. "Piece of shit."

We settled into an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the dark blue rumble of Binah's purr and the rustle of fabric as I shucked my heavy outerwear.

"So, about my fee," I said, after a time. "I'm waiving the lot. That should clear my balance."

"Not yet," Nic said. "After this job, you've still got about ten grand of principle and interest on the books."

I lifted my head to flash him a piercing look in the mirror. "Ridiculous."

"Sorry, kid. Nothing I can do about it."

Forty grand. Forty grand after Nic’s cut, and I STILL wasn’t rid of his debt. My father had owed Lev and Nic close to half a million dollars by the end of his miserable life, plus interest. I needed to recheck my calculations at home, because I neither liked or trusted Nicolai Chiernenko. I respected him, but trust? Never. Especially while he pretended to be on my side. “I see. You and Lev get one more round of work from me. That’s it.”

“I figured. Don’t worry: got something lined up already for you and Vassily. You two can come talk to me in a couple days.” Nic didn’t look over at me, steering laconically with one hand. “Vassily’s out of the can tomorrow, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded tight to my own ears. I petted Binah as she restlessly explored the seat beside me. “I’m picking him up at nine-thirty.”

Nic grunted. “Bring him to Sirens tomorrow night. I’ll tell you more there, but the gig’s worth a hundred grand to- ahh, fuck.”

I frowned as the tinny sound of Nic’s pager trilled through the cabin. The jeep listed uncomfortably close to the curb as the man pulled it off his belt and read the code.

“Fuck,” he said again. “Motherfucking piece of shit.”

“Pardon?”

Nic threw the pager back at me and stomped the accelerator, pitching both me and the cat against the rear door as he swerved across three lanes of traffic and took the next exit. I somehow caught it, held on until the jeep righted, then held it up to the light. The code was a string of symbols: ‘T1RH#4C’.

‘T’ stood for trup, the Russian word for corpse, and the number showed how many bodies had been found or needed to be disposed of. The location, RH#4, stood for ‘Red Hook, Site #4’: the AEROMOR shipping yard. The last letter in the pager code showed the severity of the problem. C for cherny, ‘black’. Conveniently, it was also the same first letter as ‘Crisis’.