Legacy in Blood (Book 1 of The Begotten of Old Series) (18 page)

Dalana listened as Vasilisa turned on the tap and the water gushed into the tub. The girl wanted to fill it up to the edge in order to be certain…

Dalana had lived on the earth for a very long time. The majority of the Begotten of Old, including herself, regarded both humans and transmogs as lesser beings. They came to this world much later, and they certainly left it much sooner. A shorter lifespan was accorded to the animals that did not belong to the world of the Begotten of Old. And the majority of humans, in their turn, regarded animals as lesser beings. In the beginning, two principles were present in every living creature: Good and Evil. In different ages these Principles were called different things. Hell and Heaven. Day and Night. Yin and Yang. But even these principles were relative, as is everything in the land of the living. Many creatures remained apathetic over the course of their life cycle, experiencing a minimum of emotions and feelings. And yet, emotions were inherent to both principles, both worlds, for on them depended the very concept of
Life
. The structure of creation was arranged as an extremely elaborate dance: some gave Life, and some took it away. But the most important thing was that it was exactly this concept – Life – that united each and every creature on Earth: humans and animals and Tengri and Noyans and Edzeni and many, many others, who all dwell on the vast earth.

Slamming the valise shut, Dalana walked to the bathroom. Kneeling next to the full tub and cuddling the bewildered kitten, Vasilisa was sobbing silently. Noticing a stranger – Dalana – the kitten began to struggle. Dalana walked over to Vasilisa, feeling that she did not know where to start. The kitten finally managed to wiggle down to the floor, but Vasilisa, convulsed with spasms, could not keep her balance and fell over onto the tiles. Dalana bent over and carefully raised the sobbing transmog from the floor. Vasilisa fell to her knees again, unable to straighten her back.

“That’s enough, now,” said Dalana, trying to keep her voice detached. “Get up. It wouldn’t do for a princess to roll about on the floor.”

Vasilisa looked at Dalana with eyes red from crying.

“You know, we had cats,” she said huskily. “When we were still people…three cats lived in our house. I remember that one of them had kittens, but Lucinda refused to drown them. She and Nicholaus spent the entire week finding homes for them…They gave them all away… God, how I miss them!”

Vasilisa howled a piercing, deep-chested howl. Dalana pressed her hand over her mouth. She had to squat next to Vasilisa.

“Shh, hush now,” whispered Dalana, knowing that in such a state the girl simply could not hear mental words. “That’s enough now, we don’t want the neighbors to call the police. Is she really that dear to you, this kitten? If that’s so, well then, I don’t mind, you can leave her here for a while. Right now I’m going to put you to bed – morning brings wisdom, as you yourself know. “

“Meow,” said the kitten, who had been keeping a close eye on them this whole time.

Vasilisa stopped howling, threw her arms around Dalana’s neck and nestled into her shoulder. She was still shaking, but her sobs gradually wound down.

Yielding to a sudden impulse, Dalana gingerly stroked Vasilisa’s wet hair.

“Meow,” asserted the cat again, and she walked over to Dalana, stepping lightly with her tiny paws, and nudged her leg with her chin.

Dalana had not succeeded in her goal this day: establishing the identity of the creature that hid under Soigu’s mask. Whoever or Whatever he was, he guarded his secret closely. But Dalana was certain that she would find his weak spot. Everyone had one; she only needed to search properly.

Dalana only hoped that the implementation of her plans was not overturned by this odd transmog, towards whom she was suddenly feeling – she might as well admit it to herself – protective. Sooner or later, Dalana must earn the advance that Vasilisa had paid her, and it really wouldn’t hurt to collect the remaining balance owed her. Then, they could each go their separate ways with a clear conscience.

Vasilisa had almost completely calmed down and now was softly blubbering into Dalana’s shoulder. Dalana’s muscles, which were cramped from sitting in an extremely uncomfortable pose, were already beginning to go numb, but she needed to wait until the girl was fully recovered. The kitten was looking at her questioningly.

“You come here too,” sighed Dalana.

“Meow,” replied the kitten and it nimbly leapt up on to her lap.

CHAPTER FIVE

 

1.

 

There, where deeds bear witness, words mean nothing.

 

Cicero

 

Towards ten o’clock, Marisa had burned herself out so much that she did not have the strength to get herself home. As a rule, analytical work tired her more quickly and intensely than field work, whether it was a premeditated arrest or a spontaneous sweep. The endless stream of emails, the interrogation of witnesses, the manipulation of data, the calls, and all the running about unhinged Marisa, who loved the adrenaline of the chase and the smell of her gun after it fired. And indeed, hand-to-hand combat, especially when there was a significant risk to her life, had captivated the girl even during her training. But today was a different kind of day. Marisa traveled from floor to floor of the central headquarters building, grabbing handsets here and there, meticulously sifting through all, even the most implausible, information of ‘eyewitnesses’ who had allegedly seen a girl who matched the description of the fugitive vampire. And there were quite a few of these ‘eyewitnesses’.

By the end of the day it seemed to Marisa that she had gone deaf in one ear: unsurprisingly, in the one to which she kept pressing telephones. She was so tired that her fingers kept hitting the wrong keys, and her evening report was so full of mistakes that the spell check gave up. Marisa rubbed her eyes with her heel of her palm, but still they kept closing from exhaustion. Her back hurt and her feet were aching. There was no way she was going to get behind the wheel of her car and drive home. Marisa could call a taxi or just spend the night at headquarters – she’d done it before. Now, in her proud solitude, she sat enthroned in a swivel-chair, her swollen feet propped up on the table like a lord. But it was also possible that there was someone else in the headquarters building who was, just like her, in no special rush to head home.

After pondering this for a couple of moments, she took her phone from her pocket and dialed Pavel’s number.

“Volsky here.”

“Hi,” said Marisa tiredly, barely moving her lips.

“Are you okay?” asked Volsky.

“Relatively,” she replied. “My lips are misbehaving. They probably just want to sleep…just as much as my eyes want to.”

“I can take you home,” offered Volsky.

“I don’t want to go home.” Marisa grimaced, instantly picturing her cold apartment. “No one is waiting for me there. It would be better if you came down to see me and to tell me what you managed to dig up since we parted company.”

“You seriously want to hear about that at night?” Pavel marveled.

“Oh yeah,” confirmed Marisa. “And I will show you a priceless composite sketch. It was just made today. It has to do with that vampire coven.”

“Is it a first-rate sketch?” Volsky noticeably brightened.

“You’ll love it,” pledged Marisa.

“I’ve got something to show you,” declared Pavel. “Should I send it by email or fax?”

“No way – bring it here yourself,” she replied. “I’m waiting.”

Marisa had not yet managed to properly stretch her back before Volsky was at her door.

“A meteor,” smirked Marisa.

Pavel swaggered over to Marisa’s desk and perched on its corner. He also looked very tired, and his bloodshot eyes were especially hollow. But to Marisa’s surprise, this detail only increased the allure of his face.

“You flatter me,” said Pavel, brushing it aside. “It’s the new elevators. Did you really not notice? They were installed a week ago.”

“I did think that the mirrors in there were suddenly very clean,” Marisa frowned to herself. “Anyway, aren’t you afraid to sit on the corner of my desk? That’s seven years without marrying, you know.”

“As if I need such pain!” retorted Pavel. “All of us here are married exclusively to Goldberg and our glorious desks, anyway. Take a look at this disk.”

With these words Volsky drew the black square of a disk from his hip pocket and handed it to Marisa.

“How could I not?” she said, opening the lid of her sleeping laptop. “And you take that pile of print material over there. The sketch is there too.”

The other half of the past day had been largely devoted to the composite sketch, which was drawn by the specialists of the graphic arts section of CRUSS according to Zemfira’s description, with illustrations from a demonology compendium. Marisa didn’t find anything among the various aberrations and monstrosities that even slightly resembled the toad-like, ebony-black beast.

“Hoo-boy, what a beast!” said Volsky, scrutinizing the glazed composite sketch. “It looks just like Jabba the Hut.”

“Sure, Jabba the Hut. That’s helpful,” muttered Marisa.

In the meanwhile, she had opened a file named ‘Suspect List’ and three word processing pages appeared on the screen.

“So what is it?” Volsky contracted his forehead inquisitively.

“Beats the shit of me.” Marisa shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve been trying to find out the entire day. Useless. No one knows what she is.”

“Are you completely sure that it is female?” Pavel asked with a smile.

“So it would seem,” she said.

Volsky folded the picture in four and slipped it into his pocket.

“You don’t mind if I take this, do you?”

“Go ahead. I have hundreds,” said Marisa.

Pavel returned to Marisa’s desk, but this time he pulled a seat over and sat down next to her.

“And how does she connect to that sweep?”

“One of my informants says that it was this creature that indicated when and where the bloodsuckers would be meeting. She simply handed them over to us, like the trash.”

“Why would she do that?” Volsky wondered.

“My source doesn’t know. Neither do I,” Marisa replied honestly.

“Strange doings…” Pavel chewed his lip pensively.

Marisa was absorbed in reading the file. It contained the names of individuals who lived in the elite Danderyd district. As Marisa already knew, the brutal murders, which Papa had just entrusted to Special Agent Pavel Volsky, had been committed right on the outskirts of this community. If Marisa hadn’t been so focused on her vampires, she would certainly have been jealous of the fact that Pavel had been assigned the werewolf investigation. Though to be honest, it still remained to be seen if the killer actually was a werewolf; the agents of CRUSS had encountered quite a few talented copy cats over the years. Part of the process involved scrutinizing all there was to know about the gentlemen (and lady) who were on the list compiled by Volsky.

“I don’t care what you say,” smirked Marisa. “They certainly are deserving people.”

The list immediately impressed her with all the flagrantly notorious names. There was the film producer-cum-gangster, Gunnar Otuzan, as well as an aging pop-star – a pedophile with homosexual tendencies, known to the public at large under the name Valencio, but the name on his official passport was Valentin Sidor. Both these personalities occupied the first and second spots, respectively. Lawrence, the owner of a network of bowling lanes, was in position number three. The controversial leader of the Neo-Nazi party, Rudolf Millionov, and the businessman who had plundered half of the region around Ussuriysky in Russia during privatization, Alexander Soigu, rounded off the top five. Numbers six through sixteen held an assortment of less illustrious personages: five bankers, a resourceful business woman who owned an exclusive chocolate boutique, a restaurateur, a CEO of an investment firm…and so on. But the first five were the ones who merited special attention – Volsky had chosen them as the leaders of this list for a reason.

Marisa gave Pavel a level look. He was now chewing his lip with a dramatically indifferent air.

“So, what can I say off the top of my head?” asked Marisa. “Obviously each of these great people should have been weeping in a prison cell a long time ago, some to a greater degree than others, but which one is the suspect?”

“What do you think about the chocolate princess?” Volsky asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” replied Marisa. “She’s a sophisticated, stylish woman…have you tried her chocolate, by the way?”

“You think that a stylish woman can’t be a werewolf?” Volsky frowned. “I haven’t tried her chocolate – it’s too expensive.”

“Well, I don’t know, somehow it doesn’t seem right to me,” Marisa continued her reasoning. “I would sooner suspect that bowling alley swine. But I’ve wanted to visit that chocolate boutique for a long time –I’ve just never managed to. Of course it is expensive, but it is undoubtedly extremely tasty.”

“Well, I suspect them all,” declared Volsky apathetically. “They’re such a sweet little company of bastards… I remember how at the orphanage I dreamed of pigging out on halva… What an idea, a fucking chocolate boutique…”

Marisa’s patience was wearing thin.

“So, dear Pavel, that’s enough of the guessing game,” she said, abruptly closing her laptop. “Why are you hung up on this chocolatier? Do you have any evidence?”

“Have I aroused your curiosity?” Pavel slyly narrowed his eyes.

“Please proceed,” she said.

“So first off, I got some accurate information today about the first murder, thanks to the local police,” said Volsky. “They certainly weren’t lazy. So, this inhuman bastard killed victim number one fourteen months ago. He killed the victim and ate parts of her. It happened in about the same place, there in that wood. Victim number one was a young woman. She lay there all throughout the spring, and the thaw degraded the remains even further. Then there was a vagrant, a jogger – all in the same area, which is typical enough for a serial killer that naturally no one ever considered that this might be our business. Until the information came to Papa. So right now I have eleven corpses. Plus the two you saw today in the pictures.”

“So that means roughly one a month,” concluded Marisa.

“Don’t forget, there could be others,” said Pavel mirthlessly. “Others that we still haven’t found.”

“Of course,” she said seriously. “Do you think this is something ritualistic? Or is it just a man-eater?”

“And why not both?” Volsky ventured. “There’s a curious detail… If you compare the first body with the last two, you get the sense that over time the creature has become even more brutal, as it were… To put in succinctly, if it weren’t for the dental impressions I wouldn’t really believe that the murders were all committed by the same bastard.”

“And you think this bastard is…?”

Marisa waited, looking expectantly at Volsky.

“That’s the wrong question,” grumbled Pavel. “You should have asked: what do the facts tell us? What they tell me is this.” Volsky cleared his throat and then continued: “Last spring…that is, when the first murder was committed, new tenants moved into the community – the Soigu family moved into one of the recently built houses.”

Pavel folded his arms across his chest, evidently waiting for a reaction from Marisa.

“Neatly done,” she commended him. “The whole puzzle practically solves itself. Far from mine, which is all blank and obscure. You’re lucky.”

“That’s for sure,” grinned Volsky. “But that’s not all. I contacted our colleagues in Novosibirsk, where Mr. Soigu lived before he moved to Stockholm. I got loads of intel from them. It turns out that the lads of the local Homicide Division have long been trying to solve a series of maniacal murders that resemble ours. All told, I think it all adds up pretty well.”

“Indeed, thanks to technology,” Marisa interjected.

“What do you mean technology?” Volsky stared at her without comprehension. “I’m simply a genius.”

“I mean email and the internet,” she said, trying to conceal the caustic tone that involuntarily clawed its way into her voice.

“Ah, that’s what you mean,” said Pavel. “Well, of course, it does save time. Twenty years ago I would’ve had to fly to Novosibirsk. But all the same, I’m a genius.”

“You’re a sneak, that’s what you are,” declared Marisa.

“How so?”

Volsky theatrically raised his arms to the side. Marisa suddenly thought about how attractive his arms were and how wide his shoulders were and in general how gorgeous his whole body was. Pavel was built like a Greek god, and he knew how to make use of it when he wanted to. He knew just how to sit to show off his splendid body and that was while he was still wearing a suit. Although…Marisa had seen Pavel a few times at the gym in shorts and a tank top, and now her head was persistently circling the thought – how did he look without any clothes at all?

“You expressly framed all this so that it would get my utmost attention,” Marisa said.

She hoped that she had managed to stifle her agitation, and that her voice did not give away her underlying emotions.

“And now this werewolf of yours won’t leave me in peace.”

Pavel smiled innocently. Oh yeah, he was pretty! Marisa nearly choked on a suddenly inflated wave of desire. Her weariness vanished as if by magic. What was happening to her? She’d thought that her adolescent crush on that unattainable Adonis had evaporated long ago, as these things usually did when you grew up.

“We can fix this problem,” said Pavel.

But her crush really had passed…it had passed and now it was being born anew, but this was of a different character altogether. Marisa no longer desired romantic evenings in front of a burning fireplace, candlelit dinners and sweet love songs. What she longed for now was just some physical intimacy with this man. ‘Physical intimacy’ – until she collapsed from exhaustion…. For a second she imagined herself in his strong embrace.

“How?” asked Marisa, licking suddenly dry lips.

“It’s simple. Come be my partner, and together we’ll bite that werewolf in the ass.”

Right now I’d rather bite you the ass
, thought Marisa, but aloud she said, “And what about your boys?”

“I’ll pass the reins of control over to someone else,” said Volsky. “To Arvid, for example. He’s talented enough.”

“Tell me something, Pavel,” said Marisa. “When did you first notice me? It was after Ruslan and I solved that cold case with the shaman, right?”

“You solved that shaman case,” Pavel asserted harshly. “You alone. Your Ruslan had nothing to do with it.”