Stained Glass

Chapter 32

My punctured leg quivered and nearly gave out as I stumbled into the bedrooms, searching each one. Angkor was laid out on one of the beds, piled with blankets. Someone had cut his collar off, and it lay broken on the dresser beside him. Binah was curled up in a slumbering ball on his knees. I went to the den: the TV was on, and the smell of tea was on the air. When I staggered over to look into the kitchen, Talya turned to me and smiled for a moment before her expression turned to one of obvious concern.

“Rex, you look terrible,” she said. “You need—”

“Where’s Duke?” I said. I hadn’t bled to death, but I had bled enough to feel weak and parched.

Talya’s eyes widened. “He went to go get pizza… we decided we were too tired to cook. Why? What’s wrong?”

“The glass is a vector.” I let go of the doorway and moved back. It felt like I was laboring for every breath, but I could still speak. “It carries something, a virus or a parasite that mutates your Ka and corrupts it. Lily and Dru had it: they had it for a long time. Mason has it. Duke was stabbed with it. We can’t let him back in the house. Does he have keys?”

Talya was frozen with shock and indecision. “I… Uh…”

“Does he have keys to the apartment?”

“No. Zane took them and gave them to Stitch and Marcus,” Talya said. “They’re downstairs in the shop, to make sure that the fat guy doesn’t escape or anything like that. I… how long before…?”

“It might only have been a few minutes or hours for Mason. Onset of the symptoms might vary from person to person,” I said. “We can’t let Duke inside. We need to call Jenner. Can you talk to the others? Stitch and Marcus?”

The girl swallowed, chewed on her lip, then straightened. “I’ll try and explain it to them. And I’ll call Jenner. Will he be okay if we get to him quickly, I mean… and what about you?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a Weeder. Maybe it won’t infect me at all.” Haltingly, I reached out and patted her shoulder with my better hand. It was not something I’d ever done before, not with a person as unfamiliar to me as Talya, but I couldn’t deny that something about her made me feel protective. Fraternal, maybe. “I’m going to go and talk to Vanya while there’s time. Before I go do that, I want to go check something on Angkor.”

“No worries. If we get him now, we should be able to do something.” She smiled, wanly this time, and returned the pat on my forearm before we broke for the front door.

The two Tigers were smoking and watching TV in the back office of the parlor. Talya split from me and went to talk while I headed for the door leading down and tried to summon energy I simply didn’t have. Usually, I could mine myself for momentum, but it was all I could do to shuffle down each step. My chest was tight, my body was wracked with sharp pain, and I was burned out. Tired… very, very tired.

The Tigers had stripped Vanya and chained him on his feet, arms raised overhead. His wrists already swollen and bloody from the handcuffs keeping him fixed to one of the overhead beams. He was precariously balanced on a short plastic footstool, wobbling as he continually tried to find leverage against his bondage and a comfortable position for his injured leg. Neither were possible. He could barely fit one foot on the stool, let alone two. It was an agonizing way to position someone, and my regard for Zane rose a notch.

“I hoped to never have to see you in your underwear, Uncle Vitas,” I said, using the nickname he’d earned so long ago. We were both Ukrainian by blood, and we both spoke Surzhyk, the hybrid dialect common to the part of the continent where we drew our blood and history. “It’s an unfortunate sight. You look… itchy.”

Vanya spat at me, but even that motion threw him off balance. The mucus landed on floor to my right.

I watched him for a few moments, tapping the Wardbreaker’s silencer against the palm of my other hand. Exhausted as I was, seeing Vanya like this – sweaty, his remaining hair plastered to his face, bloody and stripped of his dignity – was gratifying. He was used to being on the other end of the stick. “As much as I hate you, I have to admit. You’re smarter than I ever believed. What do you think of chess, Vanya?”

“I think you’re fucking dead! Sergei’s coming after me. The Deacon’s comin’ after me. You’re dead!”

“No,” I replied, watching him steadily. “I’m not. Not for lack of trying. Because you’re smart… but your plans were based on a flawed premise. You believe all men are like you.”

Vanya continued to curse and writhe, but the struggle was wearing him out beyond endurance. I walked up to him, circling around behind him slowly. His skin tensed. I saw it in his tattoos, the way his scars and flab changed shape.

“So… you have been part of the TVS for long enough to go through an initiation,” I said, from behind him. “And Lev was almost certainly involved. Did Jana bring you in, or was it the other way around?”

“Fuck off,” Vanya replied.

“Sergei must know, but it’s not our Pakhun’s way to serve anyone, not even the NO,” I continued, keeping my voice down. “So he sanctioned you and Lev as long as he got his due.”

“Fuck off!” Vanya roared, rattling his cuffs. He nearly lost his balance on the footstool, unable to find purchase with his gun-shot leg. From the back, the flesh of that leg was purpling… not something that put me at ease.

“He sanctioned you because Jana knew that the Gift Horse Mare was here.” I drew around beside him, and began to pry and poke at him with the point of the knife, digging it in without drawing blood on his waist and groin, which made his flesh flinch and further destabilized him. Pain was a terrible way to get information, and beyond sadistic vindication, I had no desire to beat him. “And that’s what Sergei wants. The Mare. As long as he gets her, he didn’t care if you wore a purple dress and let Lev fuck your ass under the full moon.”

Already furious and getting angrier, Vanya spat like an angry camel as he twisted and thrashed. “I’ll fuck YOU in the ass, you stupid piece of shit!”

I came around enough that he could see my face again. I never liked looking at other people’s faces for too long, but I was a master at using my own for effect. My eyes are nearly white, and one of the advantages of being short is that I can put them in shadow under my brow and wield them like flashlights, a predatory focus that never fail to make bound men jump. When I angled my head and flicked my eyes from floor to face, Vanya flinched.

“Lev knew where to find me after that first meeting with Sergei, Vanya. He knew I’d rescue Vassily and choose him over the Organizatsiya and the Fruit. He knew I’d do anything for Vassily, whatever it took to save him, because he and Sergei had raised me to do that exact thing.” Almost idly, I pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the swell of Vanya’s tiny, flaccid cock. He flinched again, trying to put his bad foot up onto the stool, and his gathering confusion and fear were enough to steady my tongue for the next words. “You arranged to have Vassily raped and infected in prison, didn’t you?”

He didn’t say anything until the trigger clicked into position.

“Little fuck deserved everything he got,” Vanya hissed. It wasn’t hot in the room, but sweat trickled down his body.

“It was easy to hook him after that,” I said. And I couldn’t keep the bitter sorrow from my voice. “But it couldn’t have been you who thought it up. You’re not creative enough. It must have been Nicolai.”

“It was Lev, you dumbfuck. Same with Rodion. Same with everything.” Vanya said. His voice radiated a perverse smugness, his pride in justifying the intelligence of the little man in the course of the grand game. It was exactly what I’d hoped he’d do. The Reid Technique depended on pride. “The Deacon bought Jana in, she bought Lev in, and he bought me in. Neither of you little faggots ever saw it coming, haha.”

“And Carmine nearly ruined everything, didn’t he?” The insults rolled off me like beaded water. Everything he said was a loan, a mark on the tally. I’d be able to claim soon enough. “Jana tried to get him to join, but she couldn’t control him. Not like how she controlled you.”

“Bitch didn’t control me,” he sneered. “Women don’t have no place in the Organization, and—”

“So it was Lev who dealt with Wolf Grove?” I cut him off, withdrawing the pistol. Now that he was talking, I didn’t want him thinking about his body. “Lily and Dru Ross? Was it spur of the moment, killing them and taking the kids? Or did he plan it out?”

“Lev couldn’t fucking organize shit,” Vanya said, bitterly. “Soft-handed little fuckup was too busy sucking Sergei’s cock. He forgot his duty to the All-Father, and so did they.”

“They got soft-hearted after their initiation, didn’t they?” I locked my feelings down behind the mask. “They got rid of their infection, somehow. Who tried to bring them back into the fold, Vanya?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“It had to be someone from your kiddy porn ring who they still had regard for. Who was it? Michael? Aaron? Ayashe? You’re not the kind of man who could pull that off yourself.”

Vanya looked down his beaky nose at me. He was sweating so much that it dripped from his chin, and turned my stomach more than any words he could have expressed. “You fucking implying something, faggot?”

“That you’re too stupid to murder two shapeshifters and leave cute coded messages on the walls?” I had to restrain myself from putting the gun to his crotch and blowing it off like a crushed snail, and the effort made the parasite churn and twist deep in my guts. “Absolutely.”

“You don’t fuckin’ know nothin’, Alexi, and you ain’t never gonna find those little fucks. Even if I told you, Sergei’s coming for you. All-Father’s coming for you, and you’re never gonna even see it.”

Vanya’s eyes flicked up for a moment, glancing up over my head in a flash so brief I almost didn’t see it. I heard a single heartbeat thump against my eardrums as I spun and twisted back into his bulk, away from the hatchet coming down at my head.