Trouble Is Where You Find It And I've Been Finding It Everywhere
Renny returned to his body with a shock and sat bolt upright on the bed. "Sonofabitch," he exclaimed to the empty room. "38, what in the Fourth Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell have you gotten yourself into?"
He walked over to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, A bit more ashen than usual, Renny. It can't be helped. At least the fangs aren't out and I’m not leaking blood anywhere. He walked quickly, but relatively quietly to the rear suite where 38 was staying. He listened quickly at the door (Asleep, as I expected. The Damned sleep well, as they say) before knocking.
***
Wake up, igrushka moya.
He had me by the throat, shaking me like a rag doll. I choked and sputtered and spat the water they'd thrown on me. I shivered, naked and wet, cold and getting colder, and I grabbed the pipes they’d cuffed me to, bracing myself for what they'd throw at me next.
You clean up pretty. Care for a smoke?
He snapped his fingers and one of his men gave him a lit cigarette. He dragged on it long and deep, savoring the unfiltered evil of it … and in a flash he held the lit end of it a scant inch from my eye. The orange glow filled my vision. I couldn't move. His grip was too tight. The cigarette sizzled as it came closer, closer … I bit back a scream as he snuffed it out on my chest. The stench of burned flesh rose with the smoke and I breathed as best I could past the pain, willed myself to ignore the laughter, the croons, the leers.
He snapped his fingers and his man gave him another lit cigarette.
Someone's at the door…
***
Tuesday, 02 Aug 2011
Devereaux-Shields House B&B
Natchez MS
0400hrs, local time
Irina shot upright and froze, blinking in the moonlit murk of her room. Natchez. B&B. In bed. Safe. She turned on the bedside lamp and checked her watch. 0400 hours. Who the hell? Don’t smell smoke. Not a house fire … She slid out of the covers, stood up and eased the bedside table drawer open enough to allow her access to her gun, then cleared her throat. Huh. When did it get so damned tight?
"Yeah," she called, making no move for the door. "I’m up."
Up's great, answering the door’s better. “Open up,” Renny said in a low but audible voice. "It's Renny, we need to talk pronto."
Let’s hope he’s alone. Irina pulled her gun and held it at her side as she tripped the locks at arm's length. Stepping back far enough to give her room to bring her weapon around should she need to, she said loud enough to be heard. "It’s open."
Renny opened the door a crack and then slid through closing and locking behind him in a swift motion and without looking at the door. Instead he glared at Rina accusatively. "So, Miss 'I don’t know anything about the Mob', why pray tell are they so damned interested in you? And I mean damned in the literal sense here!"
Irina saftied her gun (when had she flipped it off?) and returned it to her drawer.
"I'm fine, thanks. How are you?" She sat down on her bed and pulled her knees up. The sweat from her nightmare was going cold in the draft from her ceiling fan and she drew the bed quilt over her legs. Irina raked her hands through her hair, knowing it would be a fright wig from her tossing and turning, but the dream was already retreating in the face of her curiosity. He wakes me up out of a dead sleep at 4 A.M., and since he can pretty much rip the head off any mortal breathing, I'm getting the idea that this can’t be good. Cuz even for a vampire, he's looking kinda pale. "What's going on?"
Renny watched Irina's aura as she spoke: she not lying, but she was not exactly telling the whole truth consciously or unconsciously and something’s got her frightened out of her wits. “I'm not buying that you don't know nothing, devotchka, not after what I saw. You got wraiths calling for you, Bubbi, in Natchez. That ain't no accident.”
Had anyone said that to her a mere five days ago, she'd have laughed it off. Not tonight, though. Morning, she corrected herself. Dragging her wits together, she let go a deep breath and said as calmly as possible, "Renny, I don't know what you mean by that. What are wraiths? And why are you asking about the Mob? What did you see?"
Renny glowered, his forehead wrinkling in irritation. He then paused and visibly calmed himself. No point in getting overly worked up until they actually find her and cart her off to a never-ending Hell of servitude.
"To answer your questions in order. One: Spirits of recently deceased folks who have been trapped and forced into servitude. Two: Because the spirits in question were Russian Mobsters. Two-A: Because the only folks I know capable of doing this are a bunch of Venetian-based mobster Vamps. Number Three I ain't answering because you're still Catholic enough to believe you could have a happy afterlife. Who knows, mebbe you can.
"But that don't answer the question of why in Hell they're looking for you. Were you working a mob case? Who knows you're here? Where you sent here to find me?"
A grue ran down Irina's spine. Renny's questions hit too close to her nightmares and the reason she suffered them, getting too close to a part of her past she'd rather not relive. She pulled her knees tighter to her chest, felt the ghost of the cigarettes burning her skin, and struggled to answer the vampire in front of her.
"In order: Not directly. No one but my parents and my old LT. And no, I wasn't sent here to find you. I didn't even know you existed til we met." She bit her lip. "Renny, I ..." She narrowed her focus and took a good long look at him. He's really worked up, DiSanti. Kinda like you when you need answers and the world isn't giving them to you fast enough. So fork some over to the man. Quid Pro Quo. "Look, the last case I worked that involved the Russians had to deal with some murders back home. We suspected mob ties and we'd gotten what looked like a lead on a turf war with the Italians. Nothing solid. I saw someone one night and tailed him hoping it would point me toward some names and locations on the bosses from the Russian side. They ... um." She swallowed thickly. "Renny, you're a medium and a channeller, right? Doesn't that mean you can read minds?"
Well, so much for saving my best trick. "Yeah, if I wanna, living or dead. But that ain't the problem. Someone's ratted you out, intentionally or no. Those wraiths are taken care of." By something worse, but that's for later. "But the Gios are after you and that's a load of hurt headed this way if they figure out you're here."
At the words Someone’s ratted you out, intentionally or no, Irina's only thought was for her parents and Grierson. Are they still alive? If what Renny's implying is true, they'd—Stop. Get a grip. You don’t have enough information. Fear for her parents struck her to the bone but Irina willed herself to be still, to ignore the phone on the bedside table, to keep her attention focused on the problem. If they’d got my location from them, they're already dead. If not, there's no immediate need to worry.
"Renny, that mob case was three years ago. Why wait until now to come after me? If they'd been ordered to take me then, why didn't they kill me when they had the chance? No, this has to be something new, something after I'd left the case. How long would it take a wraith to find me? Until eleven days ago, I was right there, the entire time. Why come for me after I left? Why now? It doesn't make sense. We're missing something. You said that the wraiths were Russian mob, that the people making the wraiths are Venetian mob vamps, and you think they might be connected to a case from three years ago? Have I got right?" Under the onslaught of her questions, her anxiety retreated. It was still screaming but it was no longer deafening. She could hear herself think. "You said ‘Geo’. Is that Italian? Short for Giovanni? Giovanni's one of the most common Italian names out there. Are they the Venetian mob vamps you mentioned? Don't look at me like that. I'm half Italian, Renny. DiSanti. Duh."
Renny growled subvocally. "Lookit you makin' logical leaps and everything. Give yourself a gold freakin' star. Why now? I dunno. You gotta realize these guys live forever, so they tend to think long term. Three years is nothin' to these guys. Mebbe they think you know something and are afraid you'll blab. Mebbe you had protection on the Island and didn't know it. Mebbe they just now realized you were gone and they needed you for somethin'. Mebbe one of them just wanted to see the look on your face when they cornered you like last time. Some of them are into crap like that. There ain't no point in asking a pack of wolves why they're chasin' you. You gotta make them lose the scent or give 'em a reason to ditch the pursuit." Renny could feel the fangs elongating in his mouth. I gotta get out of here. I am too keyed up and too low on blood to stay in a room with someone who ain't lunch.
"All right." Irina skipped to the last question on her list. "Wraiths are after me. How long do I have before the find me, Renny?"
"How should I know?" Renny said irritatedly. "Lookaddit this way. A hunter is tryin' to flush out, I dunno, a duck or somethin', and he sends a couple of dogs into the brush to set it off. 'Cept the duck don't fly out and the dogs don't come back. Whaddaya do? Depends on how much you want the duck and how much you miss the dogs.
"In our favor, the dogs, ah, wraiths were new and didn't seem particularly skilled. The Gio who sent them will likely think they ran into something they shouldn't've and got killed, which they did. What the Gios do next and when they do it depends on why they are after you."
"Okay. I've got some time." Irina crossed her arms and leaned back against the headboard. She was still scared but she had a problem in front of her and a puzzle to solve. She could freak out later. "As to why they are after me, I can't tell you because I don't know. I can guess. It must have something to do with the turf war from three years ago, either the people or the territory. I'm not entirely sure where I fit into all of it. I only know they snatched me off the street and beat me for three days in a basement. I was rescued before they could kill me. They never caught who did it. It's why I'm not a cop anymore, Renny. I suffered a head injury that left me with migraines so bad I had to retire on disability. Why they didn't kill me then, I don't know. Maybe I was rescued in time. Maybe they had orders let me live. Maybe I was supposed to be an object lesson, a message. If we can find out what that object lesson was or who that message was meant for, maybe we can find out why they want me now. I've had three fuckin' years to think on this and get it to make sense. If you say that Venetian Vampire Mob goons did this to me during a hostile takeover of Russian territory, I won't argue. Right now, it's leading the pack when it comes to theories."
Renny paced quickly across the room. Thrice damned Shiksa. I don't need this crap I was supposed to be able to hang out here for a decade or two until the damned heat was off. Now, if they find you they find me, even if I leave now. It's the third act of “The King in Yellow” all over again. We’re trapped in Carcosa like the damned drowning rats. Gotta think through this. There's gotta be some clue we can use.
Renny closed his eyes and exhaled. Sheesh Renny, calm down or your gonna rip this girl's head off. ओं मणिपद्मे हूं and all that good crap. "Alright, how's about this? Think about what happened, don't talk, just think, don't conjecture, just run it through your head like you were tryin' to remember all the details of a really bad movie you saw last month." Renny continued in a smooth sonorous voice losing its accent, "Calm now, it cannot harm you. It is just a memory, just a movie. A piece of the past. Think about it slowing winding out."
Irina took no chances. She closed her eyes and went back to the start of the case, beginning with the first body in the trail that eventually led her to the basement. She showed him every crime scene along the way, every file she completed, every note she'd scribbled, every person she'd talked to. She let him feel that hard spurt of excitement when she'd recognized the Russian on the street that night and her split-second decision to tail him without back-up. The next part was harder. She took a deep breath and steadied herself and pulled the lid off the box where she kept her basement memories. She spared no detail, from turning that final corner and getting koshed from behind, to waking up naked and cuffed to the pipes. Every blow, every word, every blackout and recovery. She dragged through the weeks of recuperation after her rescue, relived the mounting frustration at her infirmity, felt again the bitter realization she could no longer remain on the force. Pain spiked through her head, ice pick sharp, and something flashed to the fore.
The door opened and he walked through. I coughed, dribbling bile, and the fist that had plowed into my gut froze midswing.
"The police come. Leave her."
A final hard shove, the ferocious crack of the wall against my head, and I let the blackness inside swallow me…
She had no sense of how long it took her to deliver it all up, she only knew that she was breathing hard and sweating when she finished. Irina opened her eyes and couldn't focus. She blinked and something hot and wet splashed her chest. She wiped the tears away and sniffed and looked at Renny.
"Did you get that?" she asked, hoarse.
As the memory played out, Renny felt the blows, physical and mental. He'd suffered a few beatdowns in his day. He kept distant where he could. There's a lotta hurt in there and I’m in no shape to get too deep into this right now. He held up a hand maintaining calm in his voice. "OK, I think you can stop now. Calm your mind. I didn't see anything which means you didn't recognize anything. Maybe later."
His teeth itched. "Listen, right now what I need is gonna sound a little odd. Could I prevail upon you to drive out me out into the country a bit?"
"Yeah, sure." Irina blinked and changed gears. She'd noticed he'd been getting steadily antsy and wondered what he had in mind. "Gimme two minutes." She pulled on her boots and cargo pants over her tank and skivvies, grabbed her wallet, keys, and gun. The last she shoved, safety on, into her rear waistband and pulled her tank over the grip to hide it. "Do I wanna know why?"
"Let’s just say I gotta go cow tipping and leave it at that."
"Let's go."
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