Page 114 of The Darkness is Calling

“There were two plans,” he shouts, making me stop.

“Explain,” I demand, hungry to return to my work as quickly as possible.

“To bring you in alive, if possible. Otherwise, death was the alternative. And if we failed at either of those, we had to keep you there as long as possible.”

My body tenses. I feel my skin prickle, and I am one second away from losing control. A savage impulse pushes me toward the limit I barely manage to hold, stopping myself from driving the knife into his thigh, his throat, his gut, splitting him open from one side to another. And then to dig through his insides as if in a pit where I have lost something small, but important.

My lucidity, to be precise.

“You were right,” I hear my older brother’s voice from behind me, grave and touched by a note of concern.

“Vodka or water?” I manage to ask the man in front of me through my teeth.

“Vodka,” he answers in a broken voice, almost relieved, and Dima moves immediately.

I turn toward my brothers, studying them with interest. I assume they are just as confused as I am, but none of us lets that detail show.

“Ideas?” I ask quietly, once Dima joins us too.

“The Irish?” Dimitri says, immediately lifting his shoulders like an innocent man. “I’m just saying...”

His problem with them is becoming ridiculous.

“They are our allies. They would have no reason.”

“They are the only ones who could claim this is their country,” Yaroslav adds, building on our shadow’s assumption. “You can’t expect that bastard Tristan Romano to pretend to be English just to mislead us. He would drag Pavarotti from the grave just to make sure everyone knew he was an italiano vero.”

“But why would the Irish do this?” Sasha asks. “You’ll never see an alliance between them and the Italians, not even if they had the same mother.”

Everything they say is correct, which only makes the situation more tangled. Even though we have many enemies, right now none of them fits the profile we have outlined. We suspect all of them, yet at the same time, it doesn’t seem to be any one of them.

I turn toward friend number two, the one who continues refusing to give me answers.

“Tell me everything you know about your employer.”

He stays silent. This time, he no longer plays brave, nor does he throw obscene words at me. Drops of sweat run down his reddened face from the pain that, I assume, is echoing through his entire hand, beginning from the nail that is still bleeding heavily. Just like his friend’s arm, which I allow to breathe for a moment, even though he seems to be the main source of information today.

Since the “fake Albanian” continues to stay silent, I settle for turning him into the sacrificial element that will help me truly terrify the other one.

I return to the table and pick up a small torch, which I ignite in front of him. His eyes widen with horror, and his body begins to tremble. The first Englishman reacts the same way.

“Suka!” I hear from behind me, and I turn toward the three of them only to see Sasha with his fingers shoved into his mouth.

I frown. A little more and he will fit his whole fist in there.

“A popcorn shell got stuck between my fucking molars,” he yells, angry, when he sees my questioning look.

I let out a slow breath, holding on to my cold composure. “Worth remembering that popcorn can also be considered a torture method.”

But I return to the man in front of me.

“I’m not going to burn your eyes, because I want you to see everything I’m about to do next,” I say casually. “But I’m sure you won’t be needing your cock any time soon. Or... ever.”

I move the flame toward the piece of flesh, and the real screams begin.

Art.

Beside us, his colleague begins to cry from terror.