Dark Protector Read online

  Things Dad had taught me about breakdowns stormed to the front of my mind as Svetlana began moving her head from side to side, giving out feeble sighs.

  “Let’s take her to bed, I know how to help her,” I told Hector.

  Without further questions, he scooped her up and followed me to the bunkroom. The others trailed like a flock of curious chickens, but Leona’s confident voice stopped them at the door. “This ain’t the Big Brother house, the woman needs to rest.”

  Hector laid Svetlana on the bed and shuffled the blanket over her.

  “See if anyone has brought vitamins. Or any kind of medication, we’ll see if there’s anything we can use.” My tone was more assertive and matter-of-fact than I’d ever thought myself capable of, which made Hector stare at me puzzled.

  “What exactly are we looking for?”

  “I’ll decide what we can use when I see what you get, but basically calcium and magnesium,” I offered a brief explanation, taking a seat by Svetlana’s side. “Better yet, talk to Leona. She’ll know what to pick.”

  “How will that bimbo know what to pick?” Svetlana said in a faint voice after Hector left the room.

  “She’s a smart-ass bimbo.”

  Few people knew, but Leona had been labeled a genius four years ago, when she’d applied for university. People of her heritage required previous examining and testing before they went to the “higher” circles such as universities, which were reserved for those of nobler – “fairer” – descent. She should’ve been admitted to anything from law to med school, but her origin was nothing short of a scarlet letter even after she’d passed all tests. She only made it in Psychology, where Mom managed to pull some strings.

  “All I need is to get out of here,” Svetlana whispered as I lit the leftovers of two candles.

  She looked aside, the small flames casting eerie light on her face and sending a strange sensation up my throat. Black and deep circles around her eyes made them look sunken in her skull, but what really drew my attention were her cheeks. They were sucked in, as if the person who’d laughed at me just yesterday had fallen heavily ill. I stroked the sweaty tendrils off her face with an automatic impulse. They felt like mine when I had nightmares.

  “We all do. Just hang in there, the others will find help. We’ll sure be out of here in the morning.”

  “In the morning . . .” A tired smile curled her mouth. “None of us will make it till morning.” She trembled, her lips white and her eyes foggy. She looked delirious.

  “Try to get some rest. Fatigue and paranoia go hand in hand,” I insisted and stood up, intent to open the window and get snow from the sill so I could lower her fever. Otherwise I feared she’d be beyond repair before help came. But, before I could turn, she clasped my hand.

  “Don’t take me for a lunatic, Alice. We won’t survive this, not unless we break them, all of us.”

  “Break what?” I smiled to keep her calm. It failed.

  She took her hands to her face, her polished fingernails scratching down the skin of her throat, blood trickling in their wake. “The confinements of our flesh . . .”

  She’s mad! I jolted to her, pushing her hands down in panic. “Svetlana, for Christ’s sake!”

  Her grin stretched to her ears like the sneer of a skull. The blizzard now whistled beyond the walls as if aligning to her growing intensity, making the window chatter from its hinges. Chills coursed down my spine.

  Her voice caught guttural, low stress. “What miracle do you expect by invoking him, that usurper? This isn’t the work of god or devil.”

  “What are you, a philosophy major?” I tried for a joke to ease the ill temper that seemed to build up in her. But, before I could blink, her hands wrapped around my neck, squeezing so tightly that I panicked, sure I’d swallow my throat bones. My tongue pushed out of my mouth, I choked on every attempt to pull in air, and this isn’t happening turned on fast forward.

  Chapter Four

  After a severe fit of coughing that abused my still sensitive ribcage, anger slowly replaced shock. Sprawled on the floor, I raised my eyes to Svetlana.

  Leona – probably my savior this time – restrained the Barbie, whose sweat-damp hair whipped around her head as she struggled.

  “You’re lab mice!” She cried over and over again. “Lab mice” was especially frequent and accompanied by spittle as Leona and George tied her to the bed with wound sheets and some rope Hector brought in.

  I scrambled up and dragged myself to the main room, stumbling over drunkard sleepers – people too wasted to realize anything of what happened around them – and boiling in my own juice. Tripping over bottles on the floor I fell by the terracotta stove, feeling miserable and breaking out in tears. My brain refused to think until a cluster of people walked in, led by Hector. With weak hands, I wiped the tears and blew my nose in a dirty glove I’d found around.

  “I’ve seen this before,” one of them said, his voice too loud. “A cousin of mine, last year. They took her to a hospice, branded her nuts.”

  “Did your cousin mention lab mice?” George laughed, and slapped the guy’s back.

  “I wonder whether you’d still talk shit, if it were your mamma in her place,” the first one countered.

  “My mamma doesn’t strip for mobsters who fuck her into madness,” George reacted.

  “Hey, I hear neither did Svetlana,” another one chimed in, although he also sounded amused. “She used to go to the club as a client, and her dances were meant for the delivery boy, namely Novac.”

  “I guess it caught the wrong guy’s attention.” That was George again. “By the way, Hector, is it true that Barbie and Novac are having an affair behind the mobster’s back?”

  Now that’s direct. I perked up my ears.

  “You ask dangerous questions, George,” Hector replied darkly.

  Great. Just what I needed to glaze over my wrecked self-esteem – Damian and Svetlana as protagonists in a forbidden love story. My heart ached. I’d go for someone bald and fat like Svetlana’s sugar daddy next time, but broke.

  Hector’s thick fingers slid over the chords in a lilt melody, as if to block further inquiries. But his tactics had its downside. The group changed the subject but kept on opening one too many bottles – impressive how much they’d saved from the train and carried through the snowstorm like veritable addicts.

  Soon the talking turned loud and chaotic. I could only make out isolated words but no sentences, while the sharp smell of alcohol gave me a headache. Just as the party went wild again, Leona dropped by my side with a groan. Judging by the tucked up sleeves, she must’ve gone hard on Svetlana. I didn’t pity the girl, honestly.

  “No amount of calcium or magnesium could’ve stilled her,” she said, “and we don’t have any anyway, so I put a bag over her head. Let her inhale her own CO2 until she turned into a vegetable. I know, it sounds horrible, but it was for a noble cause. Now she’s asleep.”

  Genius.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I lied. “Thanks for getting her off me. She’s freaking crazy. Maybe she does belong in a hospice.” I whispered that last sentence.

  “Or she hates your guts, is capable of killing you, and she belongs in jail,” Leona said.

  “You were wrong about Damian not being interested in her,” I interrupted, unable to contain myself. “Apparently, Damian and her do have something going.”

  “Alice, we have more pressing matters to discuss now,” Leona insisted, growing exasperated.

  “What’s pressing is that you weren’t straight forward.”

  “Now hold on.” She put up her palm. “I honestly don’t believe he’s interested in her. What I really think is that he’s faking nice to keep her from spreading what she knows. Or . . . at the most . . . he’s sleeping with her to ensure she keeps her mouth shut.”

  Those words shot a stinging image into my head, an image of Damian’s muscled, honey-skinned body undulating between Svetlana’s long legs. />
  “Either way, you shouldn’t have let me get my hopes high.”

  “I honestly thought you had a chance there.”

  “Oh, stop it, Leona. Do you think me so dumb as to really compare myself to Svetlana, or you, or others of your league? Are you dumb enough to do that?”

  Leona pulled me to my feet, keeping a tight grip on my shoulders.

  “It’s that bastard Tony you have to thank for this arsenal of complexes,” she grunted through her teeth. “I can’t wait to get back home so I can seek him out and make him suffer.”

  “I’m just being honest with myself.”

  “You’re a very, very pretty girl, Alice.”

  “That’s right, girl. Not woman. That’s probably why Damian rejected me when I tried to turn him on in the bunkroom. I must’ve made him feel like a pedophile.” My face caught fire as I confessed.

  “Or maybe he respects you too much to do you in a filthy bunk. That’s what my gut tells me.”

  “Whatever. He doesn’t want me. I might as well strive to plant a flag on the moon.”

  “Alice, your shattered self-esteem really has to wait,” she pressed.

  A huge frame passing the threshold drew my attention. Damian stopped in place, his tresses and eyebrows topped with snow, a heavy sheepskin coat across his broad shoulders. Another guy limped and hung off him like a cloth on a huge tree, seemingly ravaged not only by the blizzard but also shock.

  Before anybody could utter a word, the guy hanging on Damian crouched to the floor and began throwing up. Hector dropped the guitar and jumped to his feet, hollow wood and chords resounding against the floor.

  “What happened?”

  “Dragged, man!” the guy rattled between spasms. “Those shits, they friggin’ dragged me!” He convulsed again, the foul smell of his vomit reaching my nose. It didn’t seem to bother Hector though, who grabbed his shoulders, straightening him up.

  “Who? Talk!”

  Damian intervened, his arm mowing Hector’s hands off the Wretch. “Just gather all sharp objects you can find in this place.”

  “Why?” Hector urged.

  “There’s no time for this,” Damian said with a serious frown. He looked tense, terribly tense.

  “Those friggin’ animals,” the poor wretched soul who’d been throwing up babbled. Then another spasm and another violent throw-up – the only sound in the room.

  I forgot to breathe.

  For quite a few moments I was convinced this was some sick joke, not feeling anything, not reacting, not moving, but seeing every line on the guy’s bent profile, every fold on his leather-patched coat, as if my senses had sharpened in a split second.

  The Wretch didn’t reply to the low, puzzled “Who?” and “What?” coming from a few people with some presence of spirit, and it wasn’t until Hector asked Damian a direct, “What the hell is he talking about?” that an intelligible, however reluctant answer came.

  “We found a village in the valley, not far from here. There were people, but they didn’t answer our knocks. They watched us from behind curtains.”

  “Fucking animals!” the Wretch shrieked, while Damian settled him on a rickety chair in the corner, assisted by Leona.

  “The police station, the church, everything looked deserted,” Damian continued. “We found a house with the front door ajar and we went in. For food. There were old provisions in the basement, and old food is better than no food, so we took what looked safe. We started back.”

  “We were almost here when something lashed around my leg, man!” the Wretch said, neurotic. “They would’ve dragged me off the cliff!”

  “We had to leave behind everything we’d gathered so we could move faster,” Damian said. “We brought back very little.”

  “We’re friggin’ dead.” The Wretch breathed slower now, his lids falling heavy. It was painful to look at him. I couldn’t keep this isn’t happening from starting another solo in my head as it slowly dawned on me – someone had tried to kill them.

  It took a while until everybody processed what was said, and reality kicked in. Some came to their senses with headshakes, some with rapid blinking, and a few with hysteria. As for me, I felt rooted in the ground. An avalanche of questions started, ranging from, “What’s this all about?” to painfully insensitive, “What’s that got to do with the booze?” since Damian had everybody gather all bottles in a pile.

  “Broken bottles can be used as weapons,” Damian replied. “Like screwdrivers, cutlery and pens.”

  “Why this mobilization?” That was George.

  “They followed us back here, man,” the Wretch grumbled. “They wheezed and growled in the dark, always hidden but always close. Those shits, they’re lurking out there.”

  “Maybe they were wolves!” George retorted, his pitch high with panic.

  “Those were no wolves,” Damian said with a grave certainty that made my skin crease.

  I slowly walked backwards, out of everybody’s way, until I bumped into the windowsill. I pressed against it, keeping my arms across my chest.

  Was this all happening because of Damian’s affair with a mobster’s woman? Maybe the mobster sent his thugs to settle accounts with Damian, while the rest of us were just collateral damage – and Svetlana had known this. She’d expected it. “None of us will make it ‘till morning.”

  But then again, would a mobster go to such lengths for an unfaithful lover? To derail a train full of innocent people in snowy mountains, forcing them to take refuge at a remote cabin, emptying a whole village and populating it with his thugs only to get back at a rival? Why, when he could’ve staged anything in Constanța? This theory hung by a thread. But the other one . . . Whatever villains the R.I.S. hunted might just have that kind of power.

  My eyes rested on the Wretch, who still sat in the corner chair and in my field of vision. Leona bent over his chest and rubbed it with a wet cloth to clean the vomit, but he didn’t seem aware of her. He had the sickening pallor and lost stare of a dead man. He seemed to be staring at me.

  I followed it and turned to look behind me. Two glowing circles like the eyes of an animal flashed before me. I screamed and backed up, waving my hands in a desperate attempt to cling to something, anything, and soon a wall of bodies replaced the gleam that had sent me frantic.

  My brain banged against my skull for moments until I realized someone shook me. The physical sensation brought me back to awareness. George’s long, thin face appeared an intermittent vision as I blinked fast, trying to gather myself. His words sounded muffled and the first thing that came through clearly was, “Are you going mad too, Alice?”

  “The window! I saw someone!” I squealed.

  The Wretch moaned in his corner. My head snapped to him. His eyes were wide with fear, fixed on the pane, while his body struggled with invisible enemies, the chair screaming under him.

  A commotion started, and before long people called, “There’s nothing here.” I pushed George aside but still hung on him for support as I craned my neck to see the panes. My jelly-soft legs barely kept me standing.

  Indeed, darkness spread over the window, only the snow in its corners glistening like the veil of a ghost.

  “I saw someone,” I whispered. Someone, I was sure of it. And indeed no wolf. The eyes had been at the same level as mine, which meant whoever had stood out there was a tall person. Outside the ground leveled much lower than inside the lodge, I’d realized that when I’d been out on the porch. No animal standing on its back legs could have as much as reached the sill, unless that animal was a bear.

  “Are you sure?” George asked.

  I already had second thoughts – not as to the glowing eyes, but to whether or not I should insist on it. The situation was dire, but panic wouldn’t make it any better.

  “No. Never mind. I bumped my head against the window, the rest could’ve been just in my imagination.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Alice, you almost gave me a heart attack,” George scorned.

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nbsp; “We’re scared enough already,” another one called, his face hidden in the group.

  I shut out all reproaches and welcomed Leona’s comforting presence by my side.

  “This whole thing is getting to us all,” she said.

  “What did you get out of Marius?” I asked as soon as I could master my voice. Now, I too had a great urge to find out what the hell had put us in this situation.

  Leona searched my eyes, and made sure I could stand on my feet. “Follow me.”

  She started toward the door, snaking her way to the kitchen. I hurried to catch up with her down the narrow hallway, bumping into people who talked about what was to be done.

  We found Damian and Hector forging the same kind of plans with a few others – including George, to my surprise, who listened with a serious look on his face, nodding. He seemed proud to have become a part of their closest gang.

  Damian stood with his back at the counter, knives and other metallic, rusty objects lined on it, the sheepskin coat folded on a chair by his side.

  “. . . not before Hector and I have scouted the area,” he concluded as we came in.

  I wanted to punch myself for how my heart fluttered as I set eyes on him. I’d already waved a finger at my inner self and decided that Damian Novac was a no-no. I reminded myself that, if we survived this mess, he’d only have me toss and turn at night, obsessing about the smallest gestures he made and the most meaningless of glances – like I had until now. Not to mention that we most probably owed him this shitty situation. The man was serious trouble, no matter from what angle I looked at him.

  I kept a low profile by the door, but Leona went straight to the men.

  “Have you seen this before?” she interrupted Damian bluntly, her tone accusatory.

  “Seen what?” Damian’s deep, forbidding tone shattered Leona’s determination, but she picked herself up quickly enough.

  “Damian, you’re keeping things from us and– ”

  “I thought you wanted to ask, not impute something,” he interrupted.