He laughed. “We take all of you.” He looked back over his shoulder at a silver limo that pulled up to the curb behind Dmitri’s limo. Black Suit turned back to Michelle and flicked his gun towards the silver limo. “Get in the car.”
Aaron looked at the people standing at the front of the club, and the passersby on the street. Their eyes saw him, but they said nothing, did nothing, except watched. What a strange city where no one dared to challenge such blatant, in-your-face filth and corruption.
Michelle stepped in towards the gunman, smooth and sultry, her voice low, entrancing. “I can take care of all of you. There is no need for this.”
The gunman grinned with a grill full of gold teeth and massaged his groin with his free hand. “You will have plenty of time to take care of us. Get in the car.”
She moved in the blink of an eye – disarmed the gunman, and snapped his neck. She tossed his limp body aside and slashed out with her claws, almost decapitating the Black Suit to her left. Aaron tossed Natalya’s limp body at Oksana and Svetlana, hoping the girls would catch her, or at least cushion her fall. The last Black Suit gunman screamed curses in Russian and aimed his weapon towards Michelle. One shot went wide, and then Aaron’s sledgehammer fist connected with the man’s head in a resounding thud. Black Suit’s gun clattered to the ground and his body flew through the air until the back of his meaty head smashed into the windshield of the silver limo. Blood squirted from his fractured skull and spread across the splintered glass.
Screams and shouts flowed up and down the street as people ran to escape the carnage. Flashes of light hit Michelle’s blood-speckled face from people snapping photos with their smart phones. Aaron ran his hands over Michelle to see she was unharmed and she swatted him away. “I’m fine! Get the girls in the car!”
Aaron snatched the burden of his drunken bloodslave from Svetlana and Oksana. He caught Svetlana’s shocked eyes. “Can you drive?” She shook her head no. He looked to Oksana, “Can you?” She also shook her head no.
Fuck.
Michelle yanked open the back door to Dmitri’s limo and jerked Svetlana’s arm to pull her inside. She shoved the squirming bloodslave into the car and pegged Aaron with an intense look. “You drive.” Seconds later Michelle shoved a teary-eyed Oksana into the car. The girl murmured prayers in Russian.
More bright flashes hit from all sides as the surrounding crowd snapped photos, probably recording video as well.
Michelle grabbed Natalya from his arms and dived into the back of the limo. Aaron slammed the door behind her and dipped down to dig through the dead chauffer’s pocket for the keys. He found an electronic lock with several buttons, but no key chain. Fucking keyless entry.
He pushed what looked like a start button, and the limo motor came to life. A second later, sitting in the driver’s seat, Aaron slammed the limo into drive and floored the accelerator. The thing had balls. The big block motor growled and tires screamed as the limo shot out into the street.
At the end of the block two grey cars with blue horizontal stripes screeched to a halt blocking the road. Aaron barely had a chance to register the whining sirens and flashing lights as he locked up the brakes and slid to stop inches from the nose of a police car. Two more grey Polizei cars screeched to a stop behind the limo blocking any retreat. Black clad policemen wearing fuzzy black caps piled out of their cars with pistols drawn, all pointed at the limo.
Michelle growled in fury, her fully elongated claws dug into the plush black leather seats. “Is almost sunrise. Aaron, I must go!”
The weight of the moment hit him square in the gut. Guns everywhere. Cops everywhere. Michelle was splattered with the blood of the men she had killed. She would not survive being jailed in Moscow through the daylight.
He looked into her gorgeous emerald eyes filled with panic and knew that he would do whatever it took to save her life. Michelle meant more to him than anything. He caught the fear-stricken faces of the bloodslaves. These women would never survive a shootout, even if Aaron could.
Resigned to his fate, he grabbed his door latch. “When I step out of the car – run. Just run Michelle.”
Her eyes filled with tears of blood and she nodded. “Je t’aime, Aaron.”
“I know. I love you too.”
He stepped out of the car and walked slowly towards the police with his hands in the air. Yelling threats he couldn’t understand, six police officers swarmed him with guns in his face.
He heard the click of the limo door and looked back over his shoulder to see a blur of blonde hair and vibrant green cocktail dress jetting off into the night. Several shots fired but she flitted left then right, a lightning fast moving target. He knew they hadn’t touched her, but, if she couldn’t find a place to hide before sunrise, it wouldn’t matter. She’d be toast anyway.
Several hulking officers grabbed Aaron and slammed him down face-first to the pavement. He felt his ribs crack and his nose splattered blood on the street as his world exploded with pain.
* * * *
Chapter 24
“Happy New Years, Aaron, you’re in a Moscow jail cell. What’s your New Year’s resolution? Get the fuck out of this shithole and never come back.” Aaron peered at himself in the mirror over the dirty white porcelain sink mounted into the cinderblock walls of his jail cell. His nose was still sore, but the break had healed without a scar. After sleeping for almost two days straight, he decided it was time to clean off all the blood and quit looking like a mass-murderer.
Satisfied he was as clean as he could get from a bird bath at the sink, he returned to the concrete slab that passed for a bed in this rotten cell. He thought of bugging Urvashi again, but all he’d ever gotten from her was assurances that she was doing everything in her power to set him free. {{Trust me, Aaron.}} {{Have faith.}} {{The situation is not hopeless, be patient.}}
He didn’t know what to think, but he did trust Urvashi. She hadn’t let him down yet. With her assurances he would soon be free, he had purposely slept away the useless hours in this tiny cinderblock box that stunk of urine and mold. He tried to stay warm with only his burgundy dress shirt and black slacks by wrapping up in the tattered old grey wool blanket they gave him. The ratty thing should have been turned into rags years ago. He folded over the worn old pillow to pad his head from the cold, hard concrete beneath him.
They had tried to question him twice, each time dragging him down to their little cinderblock room with the shitty lighting and the gruff voiced detectives who reeked of cigarette smoke. His only reply, over and over – I’m an American.
Even when they questioned him in English, he refused to answer. Did you know the men you killed? Why did you kill those men? Did you know these men have families, wives and children? What is your connection with the Georgians? Why were they shooting at you? If you tell us the truth we will let you go.
He knew they were never letting him go based on any words he might say. The only way he was getting out of this fucked up mess was through Urvashi’s friends, resources, and manipulations.
In the end, they stopped asking questions, disgusted with his only answer, “I’m an American.”
They shoved him back in his cell and left him alone. He thought he was stuck in solitary confinement until the guards showed up two hours ago and deposited a drunk on the concrete slab against the other wall of the cell. Right away the guy started slurring an old Russian ditty. After an hour of that shit driving him insane, Aaron was forced to put a stop to it. The man quieted after Aaron snatched him up by his throat and threatened to tear his head off and skull-fuck his eye sockets. Aaron didn’t know if the man understood English, but he’d made his point pretty clear despite the potential language barrier.
Aaron laid in bed, trying to get back to sleep, when sometime later, another officer came to unlock his cell door and indicated for Aaron to come out. He shoved his feet into his jail-issued rubber sandals and followed the man down the dark corridor through a series of twists and turns and locked doors
to a steel cage visiting room where Svetlana sat alone at a white-painted metal bench and table. She looked sharp in a pair of black jeans and a heavy black wool coat and sweater, her pale blonde hair pulled back off her neck.
Aaron sat beside her on the bench as the officer indicated and tried to smile to match the smile she tried so hard to give him. The officer who had brought him in the room stepped back out the door and locked it, leaving him alone with his bloodslave.
That was strange.
Svetlana’s hands jittered with nervous tension as she pulled up her left sleeve and eyed the camera over Aaron’s shoulder mounted in the corner of the room. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
She closed her eyes and breathed as though trying to concentrate. “Urvashi tells me you read minds, the same way Dmitri did.”
He nodded and took her question as confirmation that the bloodslaves had learned to shield their minds for this very reason, to keep Dmitri out of their heads.
Svetlana nodded, seemed to prepare herself for something she intended to say then reached her bare wrist out to his face. “I have a new perfume I bought just for you, do you like it?” Her eyes conveyed an intense need. Her arm shook and her lips quivered. Without a word Aaron held her wrist to his mouth and bit down gently, as though kissing her.
After two days of nothing, he could use a bit of warm, tasty meal, but his hunger paled in comparison to the psychotic depth of Svetlana’s craving for his bite. With her blood connection, Svetlana’s mental blockade crumbled and a series of carefully planned thoughts hit him. As though taking a special guided tour of her life, Aaron experienced an overwhelming barrage of images, thoughts and feelings. She was showing him everything she needed to tell him, things that would take hours to explain, things she’d never told anyone else.
The roller coaster ride of Svetlana’s revelations began with the image of an insanely pissed off Michelle who had made her way back to the mansion the previous night and demolished the furniture in Dmitri’s bedroom in her wrath. She wanted Aaron released from jail, immediately, no exceptions. She had threatened to disembowel any bloodslave who touched an ounce of otrok while Aaron was still incarcerated. She refused to bite the bloodslaves. Not one single bite or injection would be allowed until Aaron was freed.
Svetlana had already been working on the situation all day long with Urvashi. Michelle’s threats of violence and withholding the thing Svetlana needed most kicked her into overdrive. Svetlana spent the entire night downing coffee and struggling to stay awake as she called every mafiosi and official Moscow contact she’d ever dealt with through Dmitri. She hit every angle trying to find a way into the system, trying to find the right people to bribe to get Aaron released.
By the next morning she had her answers.
Aaron was being charged with a quadruple homicide. They blamed him for the chauffer’s death in addition to the three mafiosi. The police had been in on the whole deal from the moment Aaron challenged the Black Suit over Natalya. That’s why the police had responded so fast. They were on their way to the nightclub before Aaron and Michelle set foot out the door. In post-Soviet Russia, the mafiosi and police had become inextricably bound together, scratching each other’s backs, ensuring each maintained the status quo of corruption and the flow of dirty money into their respective pockets.
Svetlana and Urvashi continued working nonstop all day long. His poor bloodslave hadn’t slept in over thirty six hours. With Urvashi’s help Svetlana had amassed a list of police officials, a prosecutor, and a judge who were dirty enough to take a sizeable payoff and do their part to free Aaron.
The full, unbridled truth of Svetlana’s past hit Aaron in a cascading avalanche. She was actually an attorney. The bastard Dmitri had snagged one of the sharpest up and coming female attorneys in Moscow and forced her to become his bloodslave. He’d abducted her right out of her firm’s parking garage and tied her down in his bed for three nights, biting and raping her every which way. She had begged and promised him everything he wanted in order to gain her freedom. When he finally released her, she went straight to the police, made her detailed complaint and turned in a rape kit full of his semen and DNA that he’d carelessly left all over her body.
The next day her boyfriend, a fellow attorney, died tragically in a mysterious drive by shooting. The investigators never found any evidence leading to a suspect, but she knew it was Dmitri’s goons.
That night Dmitri was waiting at her apartment, waiting to give her what she needed, more of his bite. She tried to stop him, but he shredded her clothes and raped her several more times, biting her everywhere, marking every inch of her flesh as his property.
She swore a vow that she’d never work for him, never represent him in his corrupt corporate lawsuits and back alley mafiosi business. She tried to hide. She rented a new apartment, but he found her again within twenty four hours. This time she had hidden cameras that recorded videos of Dmitri smacking her down, biting and sodomizing her, but the recordings she’d made disappeared from police evidence, along with every rape kit she submitted with each of the ten different complaints she made.
Eventually, three police officers were fired for attempting to investigate her numerous complaints. The Moscow police department supply of rape kits went out of stock for an entire month. Then one night she came home to find her apartment tossed, shredded, turned upside down and inside out, every document destroyed, all her electronic equipment smashed to bits. Even her cat was left in pieces.
Standing amidst the ruin of her life, Dmitri showed up on her doorstep. She was so desperate, craving his bite, so beaten down by his systemic destruction of everything and everyone around her, she finally agreed to do what he asked, as long as he promised to stop raping and beating her. This time she meant every word of her promise and a deal was struck.
She moved into his mansion, became his right hand assistant, represented his many companies in their lawsuits, managed all his business contracts and got a front row seat to the most corrupt bureaucracies and businesses of Eastern Europe. Dmitri had judges, prosecutors, police, politicians, doctors, lawyers, city officials, federal officials, and every kind of businessman imaginable under his control, siphoning off his payroll. He kept numerous different sets of shadow accounting processes, compartmentalizing each of his different kinds of black market activities. He had partnerships with mafiosi drug rings, sex slave traders, strip club owners, and even helped move conflict diamonds from Africa to various European retailers.
She had learned the hard way she had better do exactly what Dmitri asked, whenever he asked, or rough sex would be the least of her problems. Many of the people who challenged Dmitri legally or financially ended up floating dead in the Moskva River. Dmitri was untouchable. He could not be prosecuted or discovered for any of his thousands of crimes. He was a shadowy, wicked hand of influence all across Eastern Europe, and Svetlana knew where to find just about every dirty secret Dmitri harbored on the officials he dealt with.
She’d begun to pull out all the stops for Aaron. She had threatened the judge and prosecutor on Aaron’s case with exposure of video and photos of their wild nights spent with underage Romanian sex slaves, partying with Mafiosi traffickers. She’d offered both officials the choice of ten million rubles each, or a website devoted to images and details of their debauchery. This was the treasure Dmitri kept locked away in his monstrous vault. Each drawer of Dmitri’s vault had some kind of dirt on someone in power in Eastern Europe. Dmitri was a master blackmailer and world class extortionist.
The judge and the prosecutor made the easy decision to accept the money. Aaron’s case file and evidence was being lost as he sat there sucking down a few drops of Svetlana’s delicious blood in the visiting room. The guard that had brought him for this visit had been paid off to give Aaron these moments of intimate privacy with Svetlana, who was actually his official attorney, representing him in the case that was about to get dismissed for lack of evidence.
The
photos and video of Aaron and Michelle’s curbside massacre were being removed from any internet server that housed them, including news media, social media, cell phones and blogs. Svetlana had paid thirty million rubles to a local group of elite blackhat hackers to scour the web and strip away or shut down any postings related to Aaron and Michelle’s incident.
Aaron dropped Svetlana’s wrist from his mouth in utter shock. Her drugged, glazed eyes smiled at him with genuine pleasure as she wiped the blood off her wrist and covered the bite marks with her coat sleeve.
Aaron leaned forward and kissed her once on the lips. “I don’t know if I can ever repay you for this. You’re simply amazing. You’re a genius.”
She blushed and tried to pull her hand away, but Aaron slipped his fingers in between hers and held on. “I’m serious, Svetlana. I owe you my life. I know that the things you’ve done for Dmitri leave you feeling horrible inside, all that twisted corruption, but I think you’re one of the bravest women I have ever met, and I hope to call you a friend.”
Her eyes glistened with tears and she nodded. “Yes, I would like that very much. It’s been a long time since I had a friend.”
* * * *
Chapter 25
Aaron returned to his jail cell via the same guard after an hour long visit with Svetlana, and her assurances that he would be released very soon, tomorrow at the latest. Svetlana had even paid to smuggle in a cell phone for Aaron, with enough battery life to keep him in direct contact with everyone until his release.
He sat down on his concrete bed and let the elation of his pending freedom sink in. God it felt good to know that the women in his life would go to such extremes to protect him. Well, most of the women. Natalya had disappeared after taking a taxi into the city last night, and Katya hadn’t done much of anything to help secure his release.