Blood Hound

Chapter 9

One moment, I was watching the orange lights of the highway marching through the back windshield of Nicolai’s car; in the next, I was hanging off his elbow in a white-lit elevator. The unlit buttons were numbered into the thirties. Foggily, I stared at them, unsure where I’d been taken. I could distantly smell Nic beside me, a brown and green and muddy blue scent, and was mulling over the weird mouthfeel of his cologne when I fainted again.

The next sensation was one of lapping water against my cheeks. When I opened my eyes, I found myself floating on the surface of an endless expanse of water, looking up through a passing gallery of luminous white aquatic creatures extending far up into the green sky above like a field of stars. Or… not quite endless. Somewhere very high overhead, the green turned abruptly to black, a blackness so deep it looked less like a form and more like the absence of form. It was vacuuming up the eerie, peaceful fauna that swam innocently back and forth, hoovering them in like a screaming mouth. It hurt to look at for long.

I closed my eyes against the darkness. When I opened them a second time, there was light. My face was running with streams of water. My gaze met one overhead, as placid and calm as the green sea at dawn.

“Ah…” Lev said. He wiped my face with a hand towel. “There we go. Back with the living.”

My knee wasn’t hurting nearly as much as it should have. I lurched up to try to look at it, and it was Lev’s clammy, firm hands that pushed me back down. I was lying on a black leather sofa as big as a single bed.

“Nothing’s wrong.” Lev’s prim voice was firm. “It wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. I reset it… it will be fine. It doesn’t even hurt.”

And for a moment, it was true. Lev’s words washed away the pain and doubt like seafoam, but like seafoam, the wave vanished as my memory swept clear and my own thoughts, my own knowledge, flooded back into place.

“You…” I rasped. “I don’t… believe you.”

Lev’s face froze into neutral lines, but he slapped the mask over his expression of shock just a split second too late.

“My knee.” My chest ached as I drew another ragged breath and struggled up to my elbows. Dizzy, yes, and sore. My lips were parched and I was uncomfortable, exhausted, but I was not in agony. I looked down at my leg. My trousers had been cut up and taken off around mid-thigh, baring my legs. The knee still didn’t look right: it was puffy and swollen, purpled up, but it was mostly straight underneath the swelling and bruising. I tried to flex it and immediately let out a harsh bark of pain as it reminded me that, yes, it was still royally fucked up.

“Stop that.” Lev swatted my hand away. “The bones are still setting. Whatever you did to it, it will take time.”

Whatever I did to it? I lay back, nostrils flaring. Lev stood up, carrying a bowl of water and a green cloth away with him.

“You tried to control my mind.” I glared up at the ceiling. The paint was smooth and new. I had no idea where I was. The room smelled clean and air-conditioned, vaguely oceanic, and mild. What furnishings I could see were expensive and new-looking. Brown leather, cream carpet, mahogany cabinetry. Was I at Lev’s house? “Why? How?”

Lev sighed from across the room. “The how and why is not really your business, I’m afraid. In general terms, though, I tried to suggest that perhaps your pain isn’t as bad as you suppose. Apparently, it was ineffective.”

The blank canvas of the ceiling danced with spots and flecks of light that stung my aching, itching eyes. “You’re a spook,” I said, flatly.

“Not as such.” Lev’s footfall was soft on approach. A straw was touched to my lips. Water. I tongued the straw into my mouth and drew greedily. The cool liquid chased some of the scratchy tightness from my throat. “Do you remember anything?”

“Yes, but I have no idea what happened. By the time I roused, I…” The taste of the gun barrel flooded my palate, my body reliving the humiliation and pain. The muscles of my face tightened. I clamped my jaws together until the enamel squeaked, flexing them until the taste and smell of Carmine and his buddies passed over and through me. “What day is it?”

“The morning of the twelfth.” Lev tugged the straw from my gritted teeth and set the glass aside. “Monday.”

Monday. So, I’d been out at least a good six hours. I knew there was something I was supposed to be doing on Monday, but the faint shadow of memory flitted just out of arm’s reach. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that important.

My eyes flickered open. I locked my gaze with Lev’s, struggling to sit up higher to face him. “With all respect, Avtoritet, I want an explanation as to why you think it acceptable to make ‘suggestions’ to me.” The sense of violation that had started in the bathroom and haunted me all the way to this apartment curdled and grew. “I’ve worked for you in good faith all these years. Or have I?”

“I’ve never risked this with you before, Alexi. The only reason I tried was to relieve your pain. Please.” Lev pursed his lips, weighing his words. “Look… anything I say on this matter must never be repeated to anyone. Anyone. Not even if you suspect them of being a… spook. Not Vassily, not Nicolai. No one and nothing. Do you agree?”

This had to have been the first time he’d stuffed up like this, met someone who hadn’t just let their mind be rolled. He was a spook, a different breed of mage to me. Lev had played his magical cards so close to his chest that he practically stuffed them in his mouth and chewed. “Fine. Agreed.”

Lev sighed. He rose from his kneel, dragged a chair across, and set it by the sofa. When he sat, he perched on the edge and crossed an ankle over his other knee. “Sergei knows. He’s always known. I discovered my ability after nearly dying in prison and honed it while serving with Sergei and your father in Kolyma.”

Kolyma. Just the mention of the place made Lev’s face gray and his fingers twitch while he moved, as if reflexively looking for the stub of a cigarette or the end rind of a piece of bread. That he had some magical ability explained how this soft, effeminate intellectual had survived the gold mines of northeastern Siberia. The name made my mouth turn dry and my palms itch. Perhaps it was an ancestral memory, inherited through the blood. “I understand why it is a secret, Avtoritet. No one else knows?”

“No. No one else knows. And they have no need to know. I’m only useful in some places and certain ways, Alexi. My ability has always been subtle… Suggestion, hypnosis, eavesdropping. A useful skill to have in prison.”

A useful skill to have in the Organizatsiya. I could readily imagine him ‘suggesting’ that our old Avtoritet needed to be killed and replaced. Nic was right. Vassily was a fool to think of challenging Lev, and I’d been a fool to even entertain the thought that we’d find a way. “So Sergei knows Rodion is dead?”

“Of course. He ordered him killed.” Lev leaned in a little. “Rod was only ever meant to be a temporary fix. He had no view of the big picture, and he was as corrupt as Semyon. Sergei has plans for this place, Alexi… but that is all I will say of this matter. You are not a captain, or Vor v Zakone. You are young and American. There are parts of the business you still have no right to know.”

His words stung, and I looked down. When I thought back on my late teens—my grades, my horse-riding trophies, my accomplishments and first successful hits—I felt they were mine. My achievements. That is a very American way to think, but that was not how the old Soviet men thought. My achievements were theirs. They had put in the money, time, and energy, like I was a garden and they the gardeners. They’d sent me to the good school, bought the horse, taught me the skills that helped me succeed. He was right. Suddenly, my own early hardships and Vassily’s hardships in prison, whatever they were, seemed vastly inconsequential. Compared to Kolyma, Fishkill was a palace resort. Neither of us could have survived the things our fathers endured. “Yes, Avtoritet.”

“So, tell me how you ended up this way.” Lev regarded me levelly, but he looked a little owlish, with bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth. “Nic said you were ambushed.”

“At Vincent’s,” I replied. The details of the night were slippery, out of order. I struggled to prioritize them. “By a spook named Carmine. He works for Manelli and could even be the one who set up Semyon’s security… but that isn’t the most important thing. He doesn’t know who Vincent Manelli is. He says Vincent is an imposter.”

“That’s not possible,” Lev replied. The confidence in his tone was unsettling. “He’s been vetted by George Laguetta and by me. He’s been able to provide the contacts he claimed to have.”

“The fact remains. They believe he’s an imposter using the family name and are trying to find out his identity,” I said. “And they’ve pinned Frank Nacari on us.”

“They’ve… unless someone told them, they should have no idea that we are involved.” Lev had the look of a man reaching his limit of stress. He wasn’t the one who’d had a bomb set under his car and a pistol shoved in his mouth.

“Well, someone rigged my car. If it was the Manellis, then someone told them that I was on this job.” I tried to keep the bitterness from my voice and failed. “Carmine mentioned that he had a ‘little bird’ who told him about Vincent. Someone is working against us.”

“Already? I hoped this sort of thing would have died with Semyon.” Lev frowned. “What a mess.”

What an understatement. I pushed myself to the edge of the sofa, easing my feet to the ground. I couldn’t bend my knee, but it was able to take my seated weight. “Do you have any idea who might be trying to take me out, Avtoritet?”

Lev regarded me in silence for a long moment, running his tongue over his teeth. I watched him carefully, but he showed none of the subtle signs of guilt. No contraction of the pupils, no nose or neck rubbing, no nervous hands, no flushed cheeks. “Not many people know that Vincent has gone missing. Did you tell Vassily, perhaps?”

“No.” The word burst out before I could stop it. “Vassily had nothing to do with this.”

“Well, Alexi, you have to understand something.” Lev leaned in, hands folded between his knees. “Sergei still hopes to make Vassily Avtoritet of New York in the future… and you have been working for me. Loyally, I might add. Vassily has been gone for five years. He’s an exceptionally good liar, and your acting out on your father has had quite a ripple effect, in terms of your place within the organization.”

“I didn’t ‘act out.’ He was a monster. A rabid dog.” And a master at convincing people that he was never at fault. Everyone made excuses for him. “Vassily hardly knows anything about it.”

“I heard that it was discussed with Vassily last night.” Lev shrugged. “You probably should have told him before Petro did. He has been exposed to the worst possible version of the story already.”

“He’s only been out two days. I was planning to tell him when this happened.” My head was throbbing, and it wasn’t just from the headache. Every one of the words coming out of Lev’s mouth nettled my ears. “Vassily is my sworn-brother. And Grisha deserved everything I gave him.”

“It’s arguable whether or not he deserved it.” Lev grimaced. “And it doesn’t change the fact that everyone is now frightened of what you’re capable of. Including Vassily. I can’t think of any other people who would know you were on this job. I assume you told him?”

Arguable? When I remembered my father, I remembered a drunkard, a half-seen bestial shadow in the darkness of my bedroom. I remembered the rise and fall of a tire iron, but not the face of the man he’d beaten to death in front of me. I remembered… not all that much, in all honesty. The days before I had made the rainy midnight run to Vassily’s family home and the period between my thirteenth birthday and my mid-teens was a black hole. There was nothing but nothing, the complete absence of memory. The few memories I had before then—that first witnessed murder behind a bakery in Red Hook, other odds and ends—had only returned after I’d killed him.

“Alexi?”

“I mentioned I was on a job, Avtoritet.” I looked up at him, but it was an effort. “I did not share the details, and especially not the details of my appointments. You were the only one who could have known that.”

The other man opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and closed it again. His brows contracted together. “Well… I can’t blame you for your suspicion, but I didn’t hire you with the express intention of killing you. Someone may have you bugged, Alexi… someone may be wondering why I called you for a private conversation in my office. Given what happened to Grigori, and given that Sergei is returning to America, you can surely see why some of the men here might be concerned about what you’re being sent out to do?”

“No.” Everything he said sounded distant and dull in my own ears, as if he were speaking from far away. “No, I don’t. No one talks about this to my face. The problem is that no one talks to me.”

“Soon after you killed Grigori, there was talk of having you removed.” Lev glanced at my face, not long enough. Why wouldn’t he meet my eyes now? “The men in question are superstitious, and they fear. But I spoke for you.”

How nice. Old Uncle Lev looking out for me. “And I guess you’re not going to tell me who wanted me put down?”

Lev stopped trying to speak for a moment, exasperated. “No. I do not want another internal feud. The fact is that people wonder about someone capable of smashing his own father’s head in with a hammer, and they think: ‘Who’s next?’ That’s how it was. Grigori was a friend to many.”

So was Semyon. My ears were ringing. What a load of bullshit. Vassily had no cause to turn on me. Nic, Ovar, Vanya, even Petro… none of them had ever expressed concern in my presence. My memory flashed back to the Manelli spook. Carmine. The more I thought back—his contempt and arrogance, brashness, confidence—the angrier I felt. Someone was working with him, ratting out his own people to our enemy. “I hope you plan to have your office searched for bugs, Avtoritet. I’ll resume my search tomorrow.”

“Alexi, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t even walk.” Lev glanced down at my legs, and his mouth drew across disapprovingly. “I will put Nic—”

“No.” I counted to three and heaved myself to my feet. My head spun, the room looped, but I remained upright. While Lev watched me in silence, I limped to his living room door and caught hold of the jamb. “I resume tomorrow. I’ll find Vincent. The Manellis are going to pay for my knee surgery.”