Legacy in Blood (Book 1 of The Begotten of Old Series) (9 page)

“You don’t understand,” interrupted Marisa. “I meant, why would some otherworldly beast want to give away the safe house of some random bloodsuckers?”

“How would I know?” the witch retorted resentfully. “The creature did not explain its motives to me. It simply spoke, that’s all.”

“And then?” asked Marisa.

“What do you mean, then? It disappeared, naturally. It spoke and disappeared. The ball was very warm, almost overheated. That means that the one who contacted me had a very powerful aura.”

“I see,” said Marisa, who realized that she would not succeed in drawing anything else out of Zemfira.

As she returned home, she thought about the strange black toad. Something told Marisa that the matter was not finished. She wondered what Goldberg would say when he read the report together with the testimony of informant Z.

Marisa was driving up to her house when her cell phone announced itself with a polyphonic ringtone derived from a popular television series. Marisa, piqued at the interruption, raised the receiver to her ear. Arvid, an agent from Volsky’s team, was calling.

“Hi,” the man said, and then instantly, without pause or equivocation, he added, “Are you planning on coming in anytime within the next hour?”

“Not on your life,” Marisa replied.

“Ha, think again,” declared Arvid. “We’ve dug something up. We’re waiting for you in Okahito’s closet of an office.”

Cursing everything on the earth, Marisa turned her car around and sped to CRUSS headquarters.

“Really, we’re tired of waiting for you, my friend,” smirked Arvid when Marisa burst into the small pigeonhole, which was a smoking room and a museum for miscellaneous junk. Okahito was in the habit of gathering up anything that lay in temptation’s way, sometimes useful, sometimes not, and storing what he had found in the closet which command had allotted him through Volsky’s intercession. Eventually, his agents, those who were not afraid of Goldberg’s nicotine tests, began coming here to smoke. If, of course, they could find the time.

Currently, both Arvid and Okahito were in the closet. The smoke was thick.

“Smokers are disgusting,” was all she said.

“Yikes, don’t tell Papa,” Okahito pleaded with pretend plaintiveness.

“Well, I’ve got no time to tell him now,” smirked Marisa. “But I’ll let him know tomorrow for sure. Where is it?”

“You should first ask: ‘What is it?’” advised Arvid.

His forehead was partially covered by a bandage, and this endowed his face with a somewhat comical aspect.

“Don’t jerk me around,” spat Marisa impatiently.

“Alright already, look,” said Armen and he held out a small, rectangular object.

“We found this in that fucking Beamer,” explained Okahito. “In the glove box.”

Marisa examined the object in her hand. The small black address book was surprisingly pleasant to the touch. A silver monogram shone on its perfectly smooth surface.

“It’s made of human skin,” Marisa stated.

“We still have to verify that,” said Okahito doubtfully.

“Yeah, I don’t need to verify anything,” she said glumly. “What, you can’t tell by the way it feels?”

“Most likely you’re right,” agreed Arvid. “Still, I sent it to experts for testing. We’ll know for sure tomorrow.”

“Who’d the car belong to?”asked Marisa.

“A phoney name.” Arvid waved his hand. “Lydia Tidlund.”

“An alias,” sneered Marisa.

“Yeah, well, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t registered the car under a false name,” interjected Okahito. “I think the address book is also forged. They’re trying to set us upon a false trail.”

“You’d be surprised,” Marisa mocked the young man. “But I wouldn’t be surprised about anything after yesterday’s hurricane, and those flying vampires. Anyway, it’s my opinion that it isn’t a fake. Call it intuition, if you like, but it seems to me that this little book is a very valuable piece of evidence.”

“Uh-huh, we’ll see,” smirked Arvid. “And you in the meantime go home and rest.”

By the time Marisa left CRUSS headquarters all her thoughts were solely occupied with the small, black booklet with the silver monogram in the corner.

In her apartment, Dalana was watching the end of the talk show ‘Knock Down’. Based on a so-called viewer’s poll, Alexander Soigu had won. Grinning, Dalana switched to a different channel just in time to catch the beginning of the brilliant musical,
Chicago
. Dalana adored this movie, especially, curiously enough, its Russian-language version, in which the role played by Richard Gere is dubbed over by the Russian pop star, Filipp Kirkorov. This version was also loved by the majority of Russian-Americans living in New York – Dalana had a great many connections to that diaspora.

Well, at least the evening of this difficult day was graced by a good film: life wasn’t all bad. Ultimately, business would wait until tomorrow, and in the meantime she could to relax with the help of ‘the most important of the arts’, as Lenin had called film… Dalana expected to spend the next two hours or so in the company of the crooked lawyer Billy Flynn, his effervescent girls Velma and Roxy, and the jaunty music of John Kander. She found such company extremely agreeable.

CHAPTER THREE

 

1.

 

It is possible to exceed your reputation.

 

Ovid

 

The sharp smell of alcohol wafting from his wife’s bedroom was so unpleasant that he wanted to fling open the front door, slip out of his hateful clothing and run; to run headlong into the darkness, taking refuge in the gloom of the summer night, and to grasp after every rustle of the living forest…

He moaned quietly from the foretaste of the sweet languor that would overtake him when he thrust his fangs into trembling flesh. He would tear his prey to pieces with his enormous, frightful claws; he would be bathed in the blood that gushed from ruptured veins. He would inhale the sharp, sticky smell of death; he would absorb it with each and every single one of his pores, and it would fill him, overwhelm him, make him whole…

But it was not time yet. It was still too early; there were three more hours until it began to get dark.

“Papa?”

Jan, his twelve year old son, stood in the doorway. Without turning around, he felt the boy’s frightened gaze.

“Go to your room,” he said.

“Shouldn’t we eat dinner?” asked Jan.

“Tell your mother,” he snorted. “She’s been drinking so much that you should be used to eating alone. The refrigerator is stocked full. What’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem,” said Jan. “I just meant…don’t you want to eat something with me?”

“No.”

He still did not turn towards his son. Instead, he instinctively felt for the anger boiling up in the boy’s soul. It was an anger that bordered on malice: a good sign. Of course, being the son of a human woman, half of Jan was nothing more than human. But there was also the
other
part, as of yet still dormant and scarcely discernable; one day soon it must awaken…

Jan stood there a bit longer, as if waiting for his father to change his mind. And then he left, carrying within himself that germinating seed of rage.

For the time being, the boy’s entire stream of consciousness was an open book for his father, but the boy was growing. And already it was obvious that he had inherited the gift to hear others’ thoughts. And that gift kept improving, growing ever more complex and strong. Jan had even tried to crawl into his father’s consciousness a few times. These were still timid, uncertain attempts, and they were naturally fruitless, not because Jan was weak, but because his father was too strong.

The sound of breaking glass came from Stella’s bedroom. Apparently, she had managed to get so wasted that she couldn’t hold on to anything. Of course, she may also have been doing it to spite him. The thirteenth year of their marriage was coming to an end. Stella was thirty-eight. Three years ago their family doctor had diagnosed her with alcoholism. Stella had tried to get treatment, and from time to time she even succeeded in taking herself in hand. She wrote a novel with the pretentious title
Harmonia praestabilita
–
Predefined Harmony
. The book was about the life of the modern elite, the wives of millionaires, and not only the legal ones. Published by a notorious Moscow publishing house, this circumlocution on the theme of ‘the rich also cry’ achieved massive sales, almost instantaneously becoming an international bestseller. At least, that’s what the tabloids reported. People longed to know about the suffering beauties of the rich and famous.

But neither the tabloids nor Stella’s new hobby bothered him. Her escape from reality did not last long – half a year after the publication of
Harmonia praestabilita
, Stella was once again drowning herself in drink. She no longer wanted to write the novel’s sequel. The spark had vanished. When their neighbor in the exclusive community, the renowned film producer Gunnar Otuzan, came to their house and offered to turn the bestseller into a movie, Stella somewhat sluggishly said she would think about it. In the end she did sell the film rights, but since then she had never even asked about the fate of the project.

Stella stared at her husband with clouded eyes. She’d just noticed that he was standing in her doorway.

“What’s with…coming in here…without knocking…mon cheri,” Stella babbled drunkenly.

He carefully pushed the door shut and walked deeper into her bedroom. Stella was lying on her bed dressed only in her underwear. Next to her on the bedside table there was a dish of black caviar. Shards of glass were strewn all over the floor, apparently from a broken wineglass. An overlarge bottle of vodka was wedged between Stella’s thighs.

“Do you know,” began Stella with a thick tongue, “people who live in simple, common apartments…walk to the factory every day at six in the morning …they probably think, ‘I wonder what those rich folks eat? Probably fancy caviar.’”

Stella burst into sobs. For several minutes he stood and watched as she cried, or more accurately, as the alcohol within her cried. Tears flowed abundantly down a face that had lost its looks long ago. Then Stella dried her eyes with a corner of a silk sheet and for greater effect blew her nose on the expensive fabric.

“They don’t know,” he said, suppressing his disgust with difficulty.

“What?” asked Stella. She had already managed to forget what she’d been talking about a minute ago.

“Those who go to the factory at six in the morning,” he said. “They haven’t the slightest clue what caviar tastes like.”

“And they’re happy because of it… Oh, you’re such a bastard,” said Stella and again began to cry, this time mournfully.

Calculating slut
, he thought.

On the second floor, Jan could clearly hear his mother’s piteous howling, and she of course knew full well that he could hear her. She was counting on it.

“I advise you to finish that bottle and go to sleep,” he said calmly.

“Drink up and go to sleep, huh? And what’ll you be doing?”

Stella seized the neck of the bottle in her fist and jerked her hand up and down several times in an illustrative gesture.

“Shove it up there yourself,” he sneered. “It will be of more use. Perhaps it’ll calm you.”

“You’re an asshole!” she yelled.

Stella yanked the bottle out from between her thighs and in a flash hurled it at her husband. He ducked. The bottle hit the wall behind him and flew apart into hundreds of glass shards.

“You fucking queer!” Stella added.

He looked at her consideringly. Stella was so close, a mere step away…A mere step and just one motion of his hand were all that separated the woman from a broken neck.

“What are you looking at?” Stella asked, spreading her arms wide. “You want to hit me? You think I’m scared? Let me remind you, mon cheri, that six servants are living in our guest house. How would that be for your PR? They’ll tell everyone about how you beat your own wife at night. All of Stockholm will know tomorrow! Not to mention that you son is sleeping upstairs, and he…”

“Shut up.”

In a flash he found himself on the bed grasping her by the arm. He squeezed so hard that she whined from pain.

“Shut up,” he repeated. “You are not an idiot, Stella. You have a fat, easy life. Just one of your cars costs more than most people earn in their lives. Why would you want to lose all that? Think about it. Buy yourself a publishing house, engage in business. Or just drink yourself under a bit more. You can’t immediately drink yourself to death on the kind of vodka you’re used to guzzling. Live your life however the fuck you want. And let me live my own.”

“Your life?” sneered Stella. She began to sober up. He heard how the thoughts that swarmed in her head were changing from chaotic to ever more perceptive. That was not good. It didn’t enter into his plans at all.

“Your life?” said Stella again. “And what does your life consist of, really? Of machinations with budgetary funds? Or of scorn for me and Jan? Or perhaps of your nighttime excursions?”

He hit her across the face. Stella yelped and fell backwards onto the bed. Blood gushed from her nostrils, bathing the pillow. He inhaled the salty-sweet, dizzying aroma and a shiver of approaching rapture passed over his entire body.

“But do you know what the most horrible thing in our relationship is?” screamed Stella, wiping blood from her face with the back of her hand. “It’s not even that you don’t want me, it’s that I don’t want you! You’re repulsive to me, do you hear? You disgust me!”

This time Stella received a brief, but heavy blow to the head. Then he grabbed her by the hair and pressed her forehead to the headboard of the bed.

“If you so much as squeak, I’ll kill you,” he warned her.

She silently tried to fold herself up, to protect herself from him with arms streaked with her own blood. For good measure he cuffed her yet again.

“Now you will get up, pour yourself a full glass of vodka, drink it all, then go to sleep,” he ordered, carefully enunciating every word. “Do you understand me?”

Stella nodded. There was horror in her eyes. The blood that streamed over her face in some strange way beautified the woman; it added a hint of charm to her face, as well as a hint of the grotesque. She was restraining herself, trying with all her might not to cry out. He also restrained himself, or rather he restrained the animal within himself that was always trying to break free, obstinately desiring to savage…But he mustn’t let it, it still wasn’t time, he needed to wait just a bit longer…

Stella rose from the bed like a sleepwalker and walked over to the bar in the corner. The sound of vodka gurgling into a glass filled the room. Then the character of the sound changed – Stella was pouring the liquid down her throat. Somewhere around halfway through, Stella gagged and spilled the contents of the glass. The fresh smell of alcohol spread through the entire room. But it could no longer overcome the tart, salty-sweet aroma of blood, that aroma that called to him…

“Wipe off the blood,” he commanded, swallowing convulsively.

Stella obeyed. She wiped at the blood with napkins. The aroma did not go away, even though it did disperse a bit.

“Drink another,” he said.

Stella was once again looking at him with dull eyes. The sobriety that had returned for a short while again retreated. Stella obediently filled the glass up to the rim and tossed it back in one draught. This time she did it without spilling a drop.

“Bottoms up,” Stella mumbled inarticulately, and then she belched lustily. She was once again drunk.

Then, staggering, she turned around and lay down without a single sound, covering herself up to her chin with a sheet. At roughly the same moment he detected a growing agitation beyond the door. Naturally, Jan had felt the argument and now he longed to find out if something had happened to his beloved mama.

But Stella had already disappeared into a tumultuous dream, as evidenced by her closed, slightly twitching eyelids.

“Good night, dear,” he said and he left the bedroom.

Jan was standing beneath the arch that connected the spacious foyer with the dining room. A large frying pan was in the boy’s hands, and there was a substance of inexplicable origin stuck to the bottom of the pan. It was obviously burnt, judging by the sharp, unpleasant smell.

“What do you want?” he, scowling.

“Blintzes with meat,” replied the boy, nodding towards the pan. “I brought them for mama. She hasn’t eaten anything all day.”

“You know very well that your mama is ill,” he said, trying not to raise his voice. “And right now she isn’t interested in your blintzes.”

“You’re lying,” Jan claimed stubbornly.

“I’m lying?” he said, sneering. “Ah well, come here.”

Jan did not move a muscle.

“Come, come,” he called. “I will show you your mama.”

“You hit her.” Jan was barely holding back tears.

And then it became clear to him why the boy was carrying a frying pan. Jan was dead set on attacking him.

“You are a rat,” continued Jan, squeezing the handle of the frying pan more tightly. “If you hit mama one more time I will kill you.”

A very real, animalistic rage burned in boy’s eyes. This little creature loyally and obsessively loved the human woman that was its mother. In all its twelve years it had walked on two legs, slept at night and not once in its life had it killed. But now it stood there and looked at him with his own savage, burning eyes, in which there was nothing except a single passionate desire – to kill.

He laughed softly. This creature was
his
son. Everything was as it should be.

“I understand you,” he began, but then he suddenly felt a powerful, interior jolt. The time had come.

“Go to sleep,” he ordered. He knew that his voice would begin to change in a few seconds. “But we will return to this conversation.”

Jan began blinking fearfully. His eyes were once again the eyes of a normal twelve year old child. Turning, Jan swiftly ran up the stairs to the second floor, still holding the frying pan with its burnt blintzes. Soon the boy disappeared from sight.

That’s it, he did not want to, could not delay any longer. Right there in the foyer he ripped the clothes from his body and sprinted from the house into the coolness of the night.

Outside there was not a single light burning – all his orders were followed to the letter, and he had expressly ordered every single light on the entire grounds of his mansion to be turned off at night. The servants, of course, considered this just a strange caprice of a wealthy master. But he was assured that no outsiders would be able to discern his true form in the impenetrable darkness. There were precedents, but those who saw him so would never again have the ability to tell of it.

The prohibition against turning on lights was not the only precautionary measure of his residence. He also had a
Sentinel
with whom he had reached an agreement. The essence of the agreement boiled down to a mutually advantageous cooperation, a certain symbiosis, a coexistence that was to the benefit of both sides. The
Sentinel
was the best security known to him. Upon contact with any living creature, his corporeal mantle emitted a certain poison. This poison could penetrate anything, even though the protective layers of specialized clothing; it was mortally dangerous and acted almost instantly. The poison destroyed humans, animals, and birds, but was harmless to him. In exchange he fed the
Sentinel
. It feasted on human emotions, exclusively negative ones. Terror, hatred, envy, agony – all these were nourishment for the
Sentinel,
as well as plentiful in his home.