The Dark Path (2 page)

“It is death!” roared Antoni, hurling the package into the nearest brazier.

The Crusader never saw the blast that followed, never heard the howls of outrage from his enemies, suddenly realizing their plans had been thwarted. He never saw the cavern caving in around him and never felt his body being crushed and broken beneath tons and tons of stone.

All that Antoni saw was the girl-child, and all he felt was her love.

And that was all he would ever need.

“Please don’t kill my wife,” pleaded Rico San Diablo. “I’ll pay double what Bucelli is paying... triple, just don’t hurt my wife.”

The cries fell on deaf ears, the Dark Man calmly continuing his work. He had finished torturing San Diablo, and gained the information he’d been paid to collect. That this greasy little drug-dealer cared about his wife meant nothing to the assassin. San Diablo might as well have screamed at the stars for all the good it would do him.

All that mattered to the Dark Man was finishing the job and that would soon be done.

He had been impressed with the smaller man’s stamina. The Dark Man had tortured him steadily for almost two hours before he had finally cracked. He’d had to revive Rico three times during the interrogation. Most men could stand losing a couple of their digits or appendages before breaking, but Rico hadn’t cracked until the Dark Man had approached his unconscious wife with the blowtorch. Without a word the assassin had insinuated similar treatment for her if the man remained silent.

He hadn’t.

Now the job neared completion... almost, but not quite.

He picked up the large black bag from the floor. Reaching inside, he removed two items. One, a bottle of powerful smelling salts.

The other, a hacksaw.

Rico’s screams echoed through the hallways of his mansion, but the only ears besides those in this room, belonged to the bodyguards lying dead in the courtyard. His screams were not of pain, but anguish at the sight of the Dark Man first waking his wife, and then slowly setting to work on her.

Finishing, the assassin approached Rico, and lazily tossed his wife’s head into the dealer’s already stained lap. He settled himself, waiting for the end of the screams and sobs, anticipating the beginning of the threats. He had learned long ago that it was best to endure them, otherwise the victim’s mind filled with thoughts of vengeance and they couldn’t focus on what you had to tell them.

After an eternity of screaming and cursing, both in Spanish and English, Rico finally settled into a quiet sobbing. Finally, the breaking point the Dark Man had been waiting for: the victim realized what they had lost–and could be easily reminded of what they still had, and how simply it could be taken away.

“You will not enter Bucelli turf anymore Rico.” The words were flat, emotionless, and more terrifying as a result.

“WHAT? You mean this is all because some of my guys strayed too far south?”

The Dark Man nodded.

“Why’d you need to know about my damn import schedules?”

“Just making conversation, I guess.” A note of boredom crept into the Dark Man’s voice. “Plus, knowing your schedules gives my employer prior knowledge of your every business movement, thus enabling him to beat you every time.”

“You’re talking like I’m gonna live through this. Just shut up and put a bullet in me you fucking lackey! Do it and you’ll see the biggest damn gang war this town has ever witnessed. You’re dead! The whole Bucelli clan is dead you asshole! You just wait and see!” Rico screamed, spraying spit and blood from his mouth.

“First of all,” the Dark Man began, acid dripping from every syllable, “I’m nobody’s lackey. The man paid me for a job. One job. My life is my own, what there is of it. Secondly, there isn’t going to be any war.”

“Oh yeah tough guy, how come? What makes
you
so invulnerable after you walk into my house, and kill my beautiful Bella?”

“Because I know of your son.” A malicious smile crept across the Dark Man’s lips.

San Diablo stared incredulously at the man above him. There could be no way anyone knew of Leo. The boy didn’t even know who his father was. He lived with his mother in Los Angeles–a woman no longer connected with Rico in any way. That this man knew of his existence seemed inconceivable.

“I take it by your silence that you know who I’m talking about. If any of your people even look in the direction of Bucelli territory,
I
will be sent for your son,” the Dark Man concluded, moving away. “And there is nowhere you can hide him from
me
.”

His business complete, the Dark Man packed his tools into the black bag and moved towards the rear door.

“You mean you’re really not going to kill me?”

The Dark Man paused and turned.

“I think this may be worse than a clean death, don’t you?” he responded, motioning towards the head in Rico’s lap, its lifeless eyes staring up at the dealer. “Every day you’ll remember this anguish. Every day is another day when I might return, a day that your son might also receive a visit from
Vain
.”

With these last words, the Dark Man moved back towards Rico. The dealer’s face blanched with fear. The man before him was none other than Vain. A killer above all others. His name whispered quietly in even the darkest corners, lest he appear at its mere mention, like some folklore demon.

Here stood the man who had destroyed the Romolov syndicate piece by piece eight years ago; inflicting unimaginable tortures, before finally ending their lives in the most painful ways imaginable.

Vain grinned icily. “I take it that you agree to my proposal.”

Rico experienced a new misery as his bladder released and streamed urine from his mutilated genitalia. Yet all he could manage was a weak whimper. Vain watched the trickling pool and chuckled.

The assassin twisted away from the man, abandoning him, tied to a chair, and sobbing over what remained of his wife.

* * * *

Guido Bucelli giggled like a schoolboy watching the events from the previous night broadcast on the evening news. Rico San Diablo carried from his house on a stretcher. Oh the joy of it all! His greatest rival destroyed, the entire city’s illegal drug and gun racket would belong to him. Guido giggled again, yet another body bag being carried from the
ex
-drug baron’s home.

He still couldn’t believe the turn of events. A month before, Guido had been in serious trouble. San Diablo had been running the north side of town for a few years and, being the two main importers in the city, they’d held an uneasy truce up until about a year ago.

Disaster had struck.

Two of Bucelli’s biggest shipments were seized when they’d entered port. The customs officials had obviously been tipped off. The question at the time was
by whom
? Guido later discovered his own nephew had ratted to the cops. Marco had held a lot of resentment towards his uncle since Guido’s public admonishment over the bungling of his first solo deal.

The arrangement had been simple: two hundred handguns to the
Blood
, in exchange for two kilos of pure heroin. The entire deal had gone sour due to Marco’s inability to control his emotions. One of the gang members had mentioned something about the guns being greasy. Marco had taken it as a racial slur. The resulting bloodbath had taken months to calm, before the
Blood
would even think about dealing with Bucelli again. Guido had publicly berated his nephew over the incident, and the boy had seethed at what he termed his ‘unfair’ punishment.

His final treatment at the hands of Dante had probably seemed unfair too. The mutilated hunks of flesh that remained of his nephew attested to the harshness of Guido’s justice.

After Bucelli’s shipments were seized, Rico San Diablo had taken the opportunity to flood the streets with his product, even being so bold as to start selling on Bucelli turf. Just a street or two, but Guido knew it’d only be the beginning if he didn’t put a stop to it fast.

A war was out of the question. Neither group could afford the attention at the moment.  With the FBI already breathing heavily down their necks, using one of his own men to try to kill Rico was too dangerous. If the attempt failed, a war would be unavoidable. And Guido knew none of his men could succeed.

Thus the need had arisen for the skills of an outsider. Someone with supreme talent and little or no conscience. The Dark Man had leapt to the forefront of Guido’s mind. Better known as Vain, the assassin’s previous work had largely been discounted as street folklore; horror stories to keep drug dealers like Guido awake at night.

But how to find him?  Even if the man did exist, nobody seemed to know how to contact him. Most assassins these days worked through extremely secretive lines on the internet, collecting contracts and payments via the tap of a button.

Not Vain.

One of Bucelli’s associates had described his own attempt to contact Vain for a contract. He had tried every known avenue to connect with the killer for over a month. From street contacts to internet ‘hit’ sites–everything short of running an ad in the local newspaper–all to no avail. Guido had laughed at the man when told of the trouble he’d gone through, all for a simple contract on a local police sergeant making life difficult for his street dealers.

Thus it had been a huge surprise when the Dark Man had paid Guido a visit in his own home, passing undetected through his guards, sitting on the man’s bed, and waking him with the point of a knife pressed against his throat. At first, Guido had not been afraid. His immediate thoughts were of the 92FS Berretta sitting in his bedside drawer, and how this man’s brains would look beside the tapestry on the wall.

“I wouldn’t even
think
about moving if I were you.”  The words held a steel iciness that sent a spike of fear through even Guido Bucelli’s thick skin.

“If you’ve been sent by San Diablo to kill me, you had better get on with it,” said Guido, painfully aware of the heightened pitch in his voice.

“If I were sent to kill you, you’d be dead.”

The words chilled Bucelli. The man sitting on his bed was dressed completely in black, an angular face beneath a shock of dark hair. Guido had thought absently that the stranger was even handsome–everything except the eyes. The eyes were what convinced Guido his life dangled by a thread; that his next words could possibly see it ended swiftly. This man’s eyes were dark; there seemed no distinction between the irises and pupils, almost like his entire eye was made for peering through the night.

They were the eyes of a predator.

Unable to stand the tension any longer, Guido finally swallowed his fear enough to produce sound. “What do you want?” 

“It is not what I want that draws me here little man, but what you want. I believe there is a thorn in your side that needs extracting.”

“Are you Vain?” whispered Guido, expecting the man to laugh in his face at the absurdity of the suggestion.

The man had not laughed, he had simply nodded. And Guido had simply pissed his pants.

* * * *

Guido’s thoughts were interrupted abruptly and he found himself once again at the end of a weapon. A silenced Glock-20, its ten millimeter round staring down the modified barrel, pointed straight at his eye. Once again the Dark Man had managed to evade Bucelli’s guards, and make his way unnoticed into the heart of the drug lord’s compound.

“You owe me money little man.” Vain pronounced the statement calmly, almost conversationally, as though collecting rent from a troublesome tenant, and not payment for one of the biggest hits in recent history.