Damnation:
Ashes Remain
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." -Revelations 6:2-8
"Only a fool would underestimate a man with nothing to lose."― Lance Conrad, The Price of Nobility
Chapter 3: Hard Target
Kennedy Residence
Leon slipped on a slick gray shirt, strapped on his Kevlar, tugged on a navy blue fleece that was fraying at the cuffs and looped his holster above it. He slipped on his watch and bent to pick up the puppy as he walked. It eyed him calmly as he told it, "I'm gonna drop you with a friend. Try not to pee on anyone who doesn't deserve it." The dog licked his chin in answer.
His house was spotless as he crossed through it to leave. Even the door was replaced and brand new. He opened up the garage to find his motorcycle inside and waiting for him. With a twist of his lips, he considered how to get the dog on the bike.
Finally, he tucked the puppy into the front of his fleece. It rode in front of him with its fluffy head poking out and tongue wagging. The bike rolled to a stop at the stairs of a brownstone.
The front door opened and blue eyes with red hair looked down at him. Leon released the puppy to leap the stairs toward the person waiting there. She arched one red brow at him and admonished him silently.
Claire - treating him like an unruly child since 1998.
He winked at her and twisted the throttle before he peeled away from the curb. The puppy was safe with her. Claire would disembowel anyone who even looked sideways over something in her care.
As for him?
He had a foul mouthed peon to torture.
Warehouse District, Lower East Side
The quiet night was broken by the gong of a buoy somewhere out in the ocean. The building was rundown, boarded up windows and crumbling stone, ugly gray concrete and boring nondescript walls. Graffiti was tagged across most of the buildings near the water, highlighting gang signs and sporting filthy suggestions for the reader in bright neon colors.
Standing guard, the two men stationed outside the doors were shifting on their feet. One of them lit up a cigarette and bitched, "It's fucking cold out here, man. Why are we always on shit duty?"
The other one shrugged, "You know how Marcus is, dude. He wants to make sure Lazlo gets whatever he wants."
"So we have to stand out here while he takes his piece of ass upstairs and fucks her bowlegged?"
The other man shrugged again, "That's the gig. It's what you signed up for."
"I signed up for killing shit and fucking girls, man. Not this guard duty crap."
"Baby steps. Besides...didn't you finger that girl we took from the house earlier?"
In the shadows, Leon felt the first boil of rage at their words before the other one answered, "Yeah but she fucking cried the whole time and then the other one kicked me in the balls when I tried. Not exactly the stuff you see in a good porno."
The first man with a big nose and buck teeth laughed, "Like you'd ever get a girl to let you finger her otherwise. You look like a hobbit."
The second guy gave him the finger, "I'm gonna go plow that bitch Lazlo has with him when he's done. Mark my words."
"Oh, are ya? Like his sloppy seconds, do ya?"
"Please...he's hung like a hamster. I'll rip that bitch apart with my shit."
They both laughed and snickered. The big nosed one chuckled, "I'll take the feisty one, man. I like a woman with a little fight in her. More fun to break that way."
And out of the darkness, the voice said, "Oh, I agree. Breaking someone is all kinds of fun."
The crunch of that huge nose was loud against the backdrop of whispering tide. No guns, Leon thought, not yet. Besides, there was nothing more satisfying than beating a man to death.
As big nose started gagging on his buck teeth, the other one swung his gun up like he'd really get the chance to shoot their attacker. Leon spun a back kick and knock the weapon into the dark, caught his wrist and jerked, and broke the attacker's arm over his shoulder with a wet pop.
Buck teeth surged forward bravely and got a flat handed whack to his Adam's apple for the effort. He gagged and choked, stumbling and Leon kicked him clean in the balls while he staggered. It put him on his knees gasping, grunting, and grabbing his crotch. A quick shift and his neck snapped wetly as Leon broke and tossed him to the ground.
The second guy lifted his hands and backed off, looking horrified. "Whoa! Whoa man...whoa. What the hell do you want?"
Harshly, Leon inquired, "Which one?"
"W-what? What?"
"Which one did you finger? Which one was crying while you violated her? Which girl?"
Face pale, the man shook his head, "...I-I don't...the blonde one?"
Mika.
And the man added, "The dark haired one was a cunt. She bit my hand and kicked me in the crotch. I should have fucked that bi-"
The man squealed. The moment was too fast. The knife in his groin sunk hilt deep as Leon grabbed the back of his neck and jerked him into it. His mouth opened and closed like a landed fish as Leon hissed against his ear. "That's my daughter, you piece of shit. Who's fucked now?"
The hot blood smelled like pennies in the salty air as it poured out of his ruined groin. The man gurgled wetly.
Leon jerked the blade up as he spun away. It opened like a zipper, spilling the curling greasy tumble of intestines out of the ruined cavity. The air suddenly stank of undigested stomach gases and vomit. The man collapsed to his knees. He grabbed for his belly and his ruined groin like he'd stuff it all back in. He looked wildly at his fingers filled with his own intestines like snakes swirling there in his palms...and he went down on his side with a twitch and jerk of a seizure.
He was still seizing as Leon picked up the dying man's shotgun and turned toward the door. It was thrown open and the first man threw met his death in a blast of buckshot at close range. It obliterated his face and covered his comrades in gushing blood.
They started shouting in horror. One shot blindly through the open door and Leon kicked the dead guy into them. They were fatal funneled in the doorway. It was stupid, rash, and amateur.
The faceless body took them back and had them stumbling. While they did, Leon blasted them again with the shotgun. It went through the chest of the first guy and caught the one behind him in the backwash. As the second guy screamed and tried to run, Leon put him down with another round to the back. It sent him to his face in a smear of blood on the ugly floor.
The pound of feet on the stairs brought three more men. Leon took the first one out with a roaring pull of the trigger to the legs. He screamed and fell down the stairs. It tripped up the men behind him and Leon leveled the shotgun on the stumbling pair and fired from the shoulder. The sound was cacophonous in the warehouse, echoing as it splattered in tableau like red paint in a water balloon that burst on the sidewalk.
The whoosh of air beside him had Leon ducking left, missing the swing of a knife that nearly took his shoulder, and he spun low and swept his leg out putting the attacker on the ground on his side. He was executed with a clean hit to the face of the heavy shotgun stock. There was a thunk as a bullet hit his chest plate and Leon dropped the empty shotgun and grabbed the knife on the floor. He rolled to avoid losing his face to the next bullet, took cover behind the open doorway beside him, and chucked the knife in his hand.
It zipped. It struck. It went through the throat of the man on the stairs and sent him gurgling to his back as he fell. A bullet hit him in the back side of his vest and sent Leon smacking into the door frame. The empty room behind him wasn't empty after all. Someone had risen out from behind the desk there.
A woman shouted and kicked him from the hip into the wall again as he started to turn. Leon swung an elbow that she swept past her and pummeled him twice in the exposed side as he went. Impressed, he still caught her striking fist and jerked, taking her clean off her feet.
Skilled or not, she was still small in stature. As she stumbled forward, he caught her by the back of her belt and jerked her up. She shrieked as he tossed her into the desk and it shattered under the blow. She landed on her face and didn't move.
As he shifted toward her, she rolled to her back and tried to shoot him from the hip. The bullet missed his forehead but winged his cheek, spilling blood. As she cackled like a witch, he shot her between the eyes before she could run.
Bitch.
That's what he got for trying to go easy on a girl.
He knew better.
The movement beside the door got the person there shot through the cracked wood. They shrieked and smacked loudly into the concrete wall behind them. Leon kicked open the door as they tried to crawl away.
Skinny guy, barely old enough to shave. As he crawled, Leon warned him, "Stop. Now."
He did, going prone on the floor on his face as he begged, "Please. I'm just the guy who runs the books for Lazlo. Just a paper pusher."
Leon shot him in the back of the head without a word. He headed up the stairs while the body was still twitching.
The loud thumping music and muffled talking told him whatever party Lazlo was having, he hadn't heard the massacre that had gone on just beyond his door. There was crash of something, laughter, and the desperate cry of a girl. Moira?!
His boot hit the door and threw it wide. The man just beyond the door was snorting coke off a table and didn't even have time to reach for the gun on the couch beside him before Leon drilled him through the left eye and swung the gun up to the loft where another man was hammering his flabby ass into a screaming girl. They didn't even muffle her. That's how arrogant they were that it didn't matter.
As the man turned and shouted, "What the fuck-!?"
Leon shot him in the back before he could turn. The body fell forward onto the screaming girl, but at least she was safe now. There was a scramble of sound and the girl started shouting again in fear.
A guttural string of Russian escorted the noise of a desperate man. "Ни фига себе!"
The dialect was different than the ones Leon had on his phone. Those meant weren't Russian, but Lazlo was speaking some guttural form of it now. It was hard without the right practiced ear to catch the subtle difference in certain Slavic dialects.
After a moment of listening to Lazlo continue muttering to himself, Leon amended his earlier thought. Maybe not Russian, exactly, maybe more in line with the butchered version found in the Eastern Slav Republic.
As he rounded the top of the stairs, he found the man in question in an ugly purple robe clasping the naked girl to his front. She was smeared in blood from the man who'd fallen atop her. Her face was swollen and bruised. Her breasts mirroring the abuse they'd heaped on her. Her red hair was stuck to her face in places with dried blood.
Not Mika. Not Moira.
But young like them.
And terrified.
To calm her, Leon stated, "Let her go, you fucking idiot, or I will shoot you through her."
She whimpered desperately. Lazlo used her like a shield, putting a pocket knife against her throat. "You wouldn't. Good guys...they don't hurt victims. Yes? You are a good guy."
Oh yeah, that was the guy who'd bragged about raping Hunnigan. There was no getting around that. He had the same sniveling whine to his voice. Leon shrugged a shoulder, "She'll live, and you'll be dead. I think it's a win/win."
The girl looked desperately terrified. Lazlo shook his head, "Drop your gun, hero, or I will turn her throat into another dripping gash for me to fuck."
He was going to enjoy killing this idiot. No question about that.
Shrugging, Leon dropped the pistol. As it fell, so did he, he went to his side on the floor, caught the gun as it tumbled, and shot Lazlo in the exposed ribs from the floor. The girl took the moment to elbow him clear in the stomach as he screamed and bobbled the knife. He cut her face as she fled, but she managed to get away while he screamed like a girl.
She should have run for the stairs and safety...but she ran naked and bloody toward Leon to help him up. Impressed with her courage, he put her behind him as he rose and mused, "You're too stupid to live, Сволочь."
Lazlo, exposed in his robe, bleeding as he collapsed to one side on the bed, still managed to sound tough as he shouted, "You will not kill me! You will never see your daughter again if you do!"
Softly, behind him, the girl there whispered, "...I know where they took her. They were speaking mostly in some other language but one of them...he laughed and said Edonia."
With a wide grin, Leon shrugged a shoulder and told him, "See? Turns out saving girls gets you more loyalty than raping them. Looks like we don't need you after all."
And he shot Lazlo in the shoulder to spin him around to his hands and knees on the floor. Lazlo shouted, the girl backed up and Leon told her, "Get me something to tie him up. Can you do that?"
She nodded rapidly and ran down the stairs.
Lazlo spat, trying to crawl away, "You are making a mistake, cyka. I'm more valuable alive."
Leon pressed a boot into his back to force his face to the floor. Lazlo grunted as he asked, "You rape my wife?"
The silence was so loud. He ground his boot on the other man's wounded side until Lazlo squealed like a bitch and asked again, "Did you? You hold a pillow on her fucking face when you shot her?"
Face down, muffled, Lazlo bragged, "Yes! She loved it!"
And Leon pistol whipped him in the back of the head while Lazlo laughed.
The next thing Lazlo knew, he was being struck hard across the face.
When he came to, he was strapped to a chair in the boiler room. The girl was standing near the door in his robe. She had three rusty masonry nails in her hands. The kind one might use to sink an anchor into concrete.
Calmly, Leon commanded, "There we go. Wake up! I need you focused for this."
Lazlo spat, "I would rather fuck your mother! She would beg like your wife!"
It got him slapped across the face like a bitch. He growled and spit with a trapped animals rage.
Shrugging, Leon put his hand out to the girl. She put the nails in his palm, "The next time she wants to get fucked by a thumb, I'll give her your number. Until then...who paid you to take my daughter?"
"Suck my dick!"
And Lazlo spit in his face this time. It spilled down his chin as the man laughed, harshly, "Ублюдок."
With a snort, Leon reared back and drove the nails into Lazlo's naked thighs. He screamed so high and loud that the girl by the door jumped, but she didn't run. She wanted to watch it. The impulse to see her attacker tortured was very, very human.
In a way, it was the best kind of medicine.
Leon ducked down and picked up a pair of jumper cables. Eyes wide, Lazlo shook his head in denial as he clamped them to the heavy ends of the nails sticking out of those skinny thighs and remarked, "I've pierced your popliteal artery in your left thigh. The nail is keeping pressure on the wound, so it's just building up and waiting for release. Still..this should make things more fun. Who paid you to kidnap my daughter?"
Lazlo laughed, yellow teeth bared and returned, "You think you can scare me? They will have me castrated for telling you."
"...what do you think I'm gonna do?" Leon shifted toward the breaker box on the wall. With horror, Lazlo realized he'd fixed the other end of the jumper cables to the exposed wiring there.
Shaking his head desperately, the naked man shouted, "You won't! You won't! Good guys don't torture people!"
And Leon laughed now, shaking his head, "Sure they do. And sometimes? We enjoy it."
He hit the switch below the breaker. The lights above the naked man sparked as the electricity hit his body like a foot in water with a broken power line. He jerked. The veins in his neck stood out as his shouting died under the horrendous pain his body absorbed. His chair squeaked and rocked. His body humped and twisted.
The girl by the door watched raptly. Leon glanced at her as he killed the power. "You ok?"
She nodded, pushing back her dark hair, "Yeah. Do it again."
Amused, his mouth split into a grin, "Easy, tiger. We'll get there."
The girl rolled the final nail in her hand around and chewed her lips. Curious about her intent for that last one, Leon shifted over to eye the twitching man in the chair. "One more time for the cheap seats in the back...who paid you to take my daughter?"
Lazlo spit at him again. This time, it got him a balled up piece of a greasy washcloth shoved into his mouth for the effort. He made hmm hmm hmm sounds behind the gag and Leon sighed, rolling his eyes.
"This guy...his conversation? It's electric." A pun. Why not? It was the right time for that.
And he hit the switch.
The girl took a sharp breath that was almost excitement. She watched with bright eyes as his body jerked and he screamed desperately into his gag again. Leaning on the wall, Leon told him, "You better figure this next part out, you turd. I will flip this switch and leave it until they shut off the goddamn power to the building. Eventually, the voltage will put you into atrial fibrillation. After that? You'll arrest. Meanwhile? That current just keeps fucking you while you scream. Seems fitting, right?"
The girl licked her lips like a lion waiting to feed.
He appreciated the hunger for revenge. It was in his mouth too. Flipping the switch, Leon moved over to yank the gag out of Lazlo's mouth and he gasped, high pitched and afraid, "Ok! ok! You want Marcus. He would have sold her. He would have sold her by now."
Leon arched his brows. "Sold her?"
Licking his dry lips in fear, Lazlo nodded, "Yes. Yes. We have a broker...he handles-the sale of goods. He is discreet. He operates out of Edonia."
Glancing at the girl, Leon looked back at Lazlo, "Adjacent to the ESR?"
"...yes. Yes. The ESR is in revolt. Civil unrest. The internal power struggle, it makes for a shady way to deal in goods that certain...powers can't get through common channels."
The cold rage settled into his chest as Leon ground out, low and frightening, "You sell my daughter like a whore, Lazlo? You rape my wife and sell my daughter?"
Whimpering, Lazlo whined, "I didn't know! I didn't know who you were! I don't know these things! I take orders. I do the job! I...get perks sometimes."
The girl by the door spat, "...like me?"
And Lazlo whimpered again, "I didn't know! The man...the big one...he said it was just a job. Someone had paid him to do it. But he seemed so eager to hurt you. He told me t-t-to rape her! He encouraged me! He said he'd do it...b-but he doesn't fuck sloppy seconds."
Jack Krauser had sold his daughter into sex slavery.
He'd sold his daughter like horse that waited to be mounted.
The rolling wrath was nearly cloying as Leon replied, harshly, "I don't care what you knew. I want the money man. I want the buyer. Who?"
Lazlo whined pathetically, "I..I-I don't-"
Leon slapped his face, hard, "Who?!"
The demand was loud. It echoed. It made Lazlo cower and shake his head.
"I can't know that!" Lazlo shouted desperately, "Marcus...he would have set up the auction! He...I...they will control her first. She's wild. She'll be...broken."
The girl whispered, softly, "...drugs. They talked about drugs. He mentioned heroin. He promised he'd get me high if I just behaved. Wouldn't I like to forget and just feel the world under a filter of pleasure?"
Leon held his hand out in front of his face. It was shaking. His hands hadn't shook since the first time he'd killed a man. It wasn't fear, it was the most ungodly rage he'd ever felt in his life.
They were going to turn his daughter into a junkie whore. They had no idea how far he'd go to stop that from happening. She was the only thing in his world that was pure.
Voice painfully low, like a bear talking, Leon asked him, "...you enjoying breaking my wife?"
Lazlo looked like he might be ill. His lips trembled as she pleaded, "Please...please...I can help you. Yes? I can help!"
Leon turned toward the switch and the girl shouted, "Wait! Wait, please!"
Lazlo looked relieved like she might be showing him mercy. But it wasn't mercy she was after...it was justice. She shifted over in front of him. She stuffed the filthy rag back in his mouth. He choked, tears on his face, as she told him, "...don't cry, sweetheart, it just makes me fuck you harder." It was a pretty good imitation of a bad Slavic accent.
And she shoved the nail in her hands into his scrotum. It was was just sitting there on the chair, shriveled and exposed. She shoved the nail into him while he screamed and screamed and screamed behind his gag. His balls bled down the white wood and dripped on the floor to join the pool from his thighs.
He raged and jerked, humping and sobbing.
The girl turned away and walked toward Leon with the robe clutched demurely around her. She nodded at him.
And he flipped the switch.
The pop and crackle of electricity covered the muffled screaming as they walked down the long dark hallway.
Beside him, she finally said, "I was one of four girls in that van. Your daughter...which one was she?"
He glanced at her face as they moved toward the exit. "She has dark hair. Short. Her name is M-"
"Moira." The girl nodded at him and interrupted him, "She said you were coming. She was the bravest of us, I think. She was so sure you'd save her. She said you were tough...I think she underestimated you."
He studied her bruised face in the streetlamp as they stepped outside. She shivered against the cold and shook her head when he offered her the jacket off the dead man on the ground. "No. I don't want anything they've touched. Listen...I just...they were talking about the price of her. One of them said she'd be...checked to see if she was pure."
His teeth clenched as she added, "I was the first one they...inspected."
She stared at a point out in the water and confessed, "They hold you down and finger you. It's not gentle. The have one of the goons hold your legs back. And the first guy shoves two fingers into you until he finds your hymen. I wasn't a virgin, so they declared me spoiled goods. After that...he just kept on fingering me while they all laughed. I tried not to cry...but..." She trailed off.
Jaw clenched, he hesitated but finally lifted a hand to her cheek. She closed her eyes as two tears eeked out. "Sorry. I'm so cold. I'm having trouble focusing."
Shock. It would do that to you. He tugged off his holster, pulled his fleece over his head, and she lifted her arms to let him tuck her into it. "...you're kinda young to have a girl my age, I think."
He rubbed her arms when she added, "So..they checked the other one in the van with us. Mika? She wasn't pure either I guess. One of them...they used a beer bottle on her when they discovered she was...spoiled goods. They were starting on the third girl...Simone when they took me out of there."
She lifted her eyes to his face and her lips trembled, "I'm sorry. I'm sure Moira was next. She was so tough. She was shouting at them and taunting them. She was trying to get their anger on her I think. So they'd leave us alone."
She would. It was who she was.
Leon cupped her face and the street lamp highlighted it. Pretty girl. Maybe eighteen. Maybe younger. She had slanted eyes that spoke of some kind of Asian heritage. The red hair reminded him of Claire. Quietly, he avowed, "I will kill them. Every last one of them. I swear to god, I will."
Her eyes spilled tears down her cheeks. Her breath hitched and shivered as she smiled at him, "I know. She told them...she said they'd shit in the wrong backyard. She said they'd regret touching us."
Us. Not just her - Us. She knew. She knew he'd kill them all for every girl in that van. And every girl that had come before them.
Not just her. Not just Hunnigan. All of them.
There were reasons she was his daughter.
He'd never spoken a word about what he did or who he was when he wasn't with her, but somehow Moira knew what he was capable of anyway.
He rubbed her arms briskly to put feeling back into her. "What's your name?"
"...Tara."
"Tara," He turned her toward the bike, "I'm gonna take you somewhere safe. I need to know if they mentioned anything about an address or a location..."
She climbed on the bike in that pathetic robe she was wearing. He opened his saddle bag and offered her a blanket. As he took the handle bars and gunned the engine, she cocooned them both as she looped her arms around him to hold on and whispered, "...the scarred guy looked right at me and said...the answer lies behind the red door...I think he wanted me to tell you that."
Leon licked his teeth. He angled the bike toward Claire's again.
The Red Door.
It was a night club on the edges of the city of Vuk inside the ESR. It was straddling the line between Edonia and the sovereign state. It was a sanctuary for the depraved and the dregs of their world.
He'd had meetings there with contacts and sat across from murders in a place of relative peace to get information. You didn't kill anyone when you were behind the Red Door. If you did, you risked being ostracized from anything pertaining to the unspoken side of the dark.
If they were holding Moira there, he'd never get to her.
Unless he went in guns blazing. It might burn bridges to that side of the world for him forever in terms of business.
He didn't care. He didn't give a shit about business. This was personal. It was the only thing that mattered. He'd watch his life go up in flames if it brought her back to him.
At this point, he had nothing left to lose.
