Constantine led her across the street to Valencia, to a blue
BMW 325i parked in front of a funeral home. He opened the passenger door
first and she winced when the cold leather seats touched her bare thighs.
Without a word, he started the car and headed north.
The Elbo Room and Blondie’s had already closed, but people lingered on the
sidewalk, smoking and eating thick foil-wrapped burritos. Natalie looked
at them longingly. She rarely went to places like that—the small spaces
and the noise and the pushy people frightened her. Belial didn’t like
them.
They don’t understand us
, he said.
We’re better off
without them.
Just the thought of Belial made her head hurt even
worse. “I need a drink,” she said.
Constantine gave her a stern look and she blushed.
“It’s medicinal,” she protested. “I’m not a drunk.”
“Is that what they tell you in rehab?”
“I’m serious.”
He pointed over his shoulder. “Check my bag.”
She crawled headfirst into the backseat, digging through a
black messenger bag until she found three airplane-sized bottles with
unfamiliar Cyrillic labels. One by one, she unscrewed the caps and poured
the contents down her throat, swallowing heavily as the liquor torched her
tonsils.
“Christ,” Constantine said, pulling her back into the front
seat. “Leave some for the rest of us.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, wiping her mouth with the
back of her hand. “It’s the only thing that keeps Belial quiet.”
“What are you talking about?”
It was too much to try to explain when her head was already
pounding. “Nothing. Never mind. Who were those men?”
The BMW neared Duboce, on the eastern edge of the
Castro. Here, too, the street teemed with partygoers. Two drunk men
wove their way down the sidewalk, arms entwined, singing “Wonderwall” at the
top of their lungs. Constantine made a right turn away from them, onto
Market headed toward Civic Center. “They were Vympel. Special
forces for anti-terrorism and sabotage.”
“I’m not a terrorist.”
“I can see that.”
“Why couldn’t they?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they want from me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want from me?”
Constantine accelerated, speeding past Van Ness. “I
need your help.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth.” He reached up to adjust the rearview
mirror as they shot past the Warfield. A bright flash of light hit the
glass and reflected into her eyes. “Get down,” he said. “They found
us.”
Natalie scrunched down in her seat as Constantine lowered
his window and pulled the gun from his waistband. “What are you doing?”
she cried.
“Hold on!” He pulled the emergency brake and jerked the
wheel, sliding across Market Street toward Montgomery. As the car tracked
perpendicular to the four-lane street, Constantine shot at the car behind
them. Natalie heard glass shatter and tires squeal, and put her hands
over her ears.
Constantine zoomed up Montgomery opposite the one-way flow
of traffic. He swerved to the right to dodge a honking cab and Natalie’s
head bounced against the glove box. She groaned and popped up in time to
see the car plow toward a “No Parking” sign. “Where are you going?” she
shrieked.
Before he could answer, a bullet shattered the back
window. Natalie screamed and ducked back beneath the glove box while
Constantine shot back. She felt the car lurch to the left and tried to
place their movement on a mental map.
Columbus
, she thought, as
the smell of garlic began to fill the air and car bounced over
deeper-than-usual potholes.
Every jolt made Belial bounce and inky tentacles of pain
began to creep out from under the shadow of the vodka. Between the pain
in her head and Constantine’s frantic turns, she lost track of their
location. Her stomach roiled in revolt with every swerve. By the
time the car dropped back to a legal speed, she felt the contents of her last
meal rising through her esophagus. “You can sit up now,” Constantine said
finally. “We lost them.”
“Good timing. I’m about to lose my dinner, too.”
She leaned her head onto the cool window glass and breathed deeply the way Beth
had taught her, in through her nose and out through her mouth.
Constantine turned right onto Vallejo and snaked through a
small labyrinth of one-way streets. The last ended in a dirty cul-de-sac
surrounded with peeling gray row houses. He put the car in the garage
belonging to the smallest house.
Sagging power lines criss-crossed the sky above like loosely
woven cambric. Broken glass and piles of burned garbage littered the
stoop. The windows and doors were covered by rotting metal bars.
Half the porch floorboards and even more of the roof appeared to be missing.
“This is the safe house,” Constantine said. “We stay here tonight.”
Natalie gulped and followed him up to a tiny wooden door in
the left side of the building, an old tradesman’s entrance. The flimsy
lock yielded to his pressure and he hurried her inside. They shuffled
down a hallway and then he flicked a switch. A dim bulb crackled to life,
unfettered by a housing or shade, and illuminated a rectangular room with a
small galley kitchen and a door that presumably led to a bathroom.
Two twin beds covered in rotting green chenille jutted out
from the far wall. Matching curtains hid the lower halves of two small
windows while spider webs obscured the rest. A rounded refrigerator and
Depression-era stove kept company with a rusted dining set upholstered in
peeling vinyl. The walls were a grimy shade of beige, somewhere between
old lace and used teabag. Everywhere Natalie looked, she saw upturned
cockroaches in various states of decay.
Constantine hurried through the room, checking the door and
window locks. “I wish I had someplace better for you. Our prime
minister revoked the agency’s permission for action services, so whatever we
keep abroad has to be unnoticed and undesirable.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I just need to lie down.”
She sank onto one of the beds and a mushroom cloud of dust enveloped her.
Belial fluttered his wings as if he could sweep it all away. The pain of
it tore through her temples and she gasped helplessly.
Constantine dropped his bag and hurried to her side.
“What is it? What’s wrong?
“Nothing,” she lied, forcing a smile as she sat
upright. “Everything’s fine. I just want to know what’s going on.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to rest first? You don’t
look well.”
Natalie gritted her teeth. “I’ve been chased out of my
apartment, shot at, and nearly killed. The least you could do is tell me
why.”
“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. My name is
Constantine Dashkov. I work for the Public Security Intelligence Bureau
of the Russian Federation.”
“What the hell does that have to do with me?”
“You have information we need.”
“I don’t have shit. I thought I told you that
already.”
“Please, Professor Brandon,” he said, holding up his palms
as if he were surrendering. “This will be much easier for both of us if
you just cooperate.”
Natalie looked up sharply, clasping the bedspread until her
knuckles shone white. Behind her eyes, Belial’s shoulders began to shake
and it took her a moment to realize he was laughing. “Fuck,” she
said. “Fuck, fuck fuck.”
“What is it?”
She tried to twist her lips into a smile but moving any
muscles near her brain hurt too much. “I’m not who you think I am,” she
whispered.
“I called you by name in your apartment. We both know
who you are, professor.”
Natalie opened her mouth to explain but nothing came
out. She wished she were telepathic instead of…whatever the fuck she
was.
What am I, Belial?
she asked silently.
Do you even
know?
I do
, he answered.
Then help me
, she begged. If she told
Constantine the truth, would he let her go or just start chasing Beth?
She couldn’t think. Forcing ideas into her swollen brain felt like
pushing a bedspread through a keyhole. “I’m not who you think I am,” she
repeated.
Constantine put a hand under her chin and tilted it to look
her in the eye. “Pretending you’re someone else won’t make me go
away. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Then if you’re not Professor Brandon, who are you?”
“Beth is my sister.”
He tightened his grip on her chin. “Our records
indicate that apartment is leased by Elizabeth Brandon.”
“She rented it for me. It’s her signature on the
lease, not mine.”
“Then why do her employment records also list that location
as her residence?”
“She makes students cry on a regular basis,” Natalie
snapped. “Would you want hundreds of pissed-off undergrads knowing where
you live?” Anger flooded her veins and the urge to throw up returned,
drenching her in a wave of sweat. Belial soothed her, caressing her with
his wing.
You’re getting awfully upset, little one. I think you
should let me handle the rest of this.
She ignored him, grabbing the edge of the mattress and
clutching it until she felt the springs dig into her fingertips. If
Belial took control, she’d never find out what they wanted from her
sister. She used the pain to stay focused, staring into the Russian man’s
inscrutable blue eyes. “Why do you want Beth?”
I don’t think you heard me
, Belial said, flicking her
with a wing.
Natalie blinked back tears but kept her gaze focused on
Constantine. “I’m not going to hurt her,” he said. “I just need
information.”
“What information?” Spots danced in front of her eyes,
floating past her like waltzing mushroom caps. It was Belial, pressing on
her optic nerve.
“A man here claims he has a password that allows him to
access Tsar Nicholas II’s funds in the Bank of England. He said he shared
his information with your sister, who verified its authenticity. I need
to find out what he showed her.”
“He lied,” she said. A drop of sweat rolled into her
eye, burning it with salt. She blinked it away but when she opened her
eyes, everything had already gone black. Her fingers and toes tingled and
when she commanded them to move, nothing happened.
Not now Belial
,
she begged.
Please not now.
But it was too late.
I’ll handle everything
, Belial said.
You
just rest.
He thrust his wings up against her skull, pressing them
outward until she was sure her head would crack open. “I’m sorry,” she whispered
as the world around her vanished.
July 2012
San Francisco, California
Constantine watched the girl’s eyes roll back in her
head. She collapsed onto the bed and he reached for her wrists, pulling
her upright. “Miss Brandon!” he called, shaking her gently. Sweat
glistened in the creases of her forehead and he gasped when he felt the heat
radiating from her skin. He swore out loud and laid her back down.
Images from the horrible days following Lana’s return
flashed through his mind. Sullen and withdrawn, she’d locked herself in
her room for three days. When he finally broke down her door, she lay
sweating and unconscious, in the grip of a terrible fever. She shook and
spasmed like the girl in front of him, her skin concealing all the fires of
hell.
He ran to the bathroom and pulled the cold water handle of
the claw-footed tub, releasing a stream of ochre-colored water. In the
freezer, he found two plastic trays filled with frost-burned ice cubes and
emptied them into the water. “Hold on,” he said to her, smoothing
sweat-dampened hair from her cheeks. With one arm under her shoulders and
the other beneath her knees, he carried the unconscious girl to the bathroom.
Her body twitched when he lowered her into the cold water.
He used his hands to scoop it over her arms and her chest, exactly as he had
for Lana. The dirty water beaded like gray pearls on her skin.
Constantine straightened her legs to make sure they were
covered and dug beneath the sink until he found a washcloth. When he
plunged it into the water, a dead spider fell out, floating like a jellyfish in
the sea. He fished it out before it could touch her and placed the cool
cloth on her forehead.
This is my fault,
he thought. He’d seen the
professor’s headshot in the file. He should have realized the woman
inside the apartment looked nothing like the woman on the book jacket.
Instead of focusing on his objective, he’d been focused on finishing the job so
he could go home.
He tried to remember what his file had said about the
professor’s sister—something about sanitariums. Looking down at the girl
in the tub, he realized the file was probably right. Every one of her
nails lay ragged, bitten off in pieces above the quick. Her masses of dark,
tangled hair hadn’t seen a comb or scissors in quite some time. When
open, her eyes were ghostly blue-white, not so different from the color of her
skin. They reminded him of a frozen Siberian lake where something
primeval and dangerous churned beneath the surface.
He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. It was
still hot to the touch, flushed an angry fuchsia. How long could he leave
her in the tub until it became necessary to call for help? What if he
left to fetch a doctor and the next Vympel death squad found her? It was
his fault she was here at all; he couldn’t allow anything to happen to her
because of his mistake.
“Tell me how to help you,” he said. He picked up her
hand to take her pulse but something else caught his attention: vertical white
lines, running nearly the length of each forearm. Constantine recognized
them immediately. Lana’s, he remembered, ran horizontally.