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He’s incurred the wrath of a man more savage than the Devil himself.
The GPS location leads us to somewhere different than the home address that had shown up on Azeria’s record. We pull up outside a dingy apartment complex. The building seems to lean off-kilter, its brick faded and chipped. Boards cover several of the windows and a broken down washing machine sits on the front lawn.
“Looks like I’d rather sleep in a dumpster than here,” Omar says.
“Stay alert. This could be some type of ploy.”
The elevator’s broken so we take the stairs. On the third floor there’s a man collapsed against the wall, passed out in his own waste.
Omar makes a sour face. “Yeah, a dumpster would definitely be better.”
We kick down the door marked 3E and barge inside. The studio apartment with peeling wallpaper and bean bags for furniture is empty. Azeria, or anyone else for that matter, isn’t home.
“He must’ve expected us,” I say, glancing around the shithole of an apartment.
“Psycho, take a look. This check.”
I kick a crushed beer can out of the way and move over to where Omar stands by Azeria’s sticky kitchen counter. Seeing the name on the check makes rage crackle through my veins like electricity. I snatch it from Omar's grasp, nearly tearing the paper.
“Volchok,” I say.
“The same guy who paid off Mirra?”
“Looks like it.”
“Who is he?”
“Somebody who seems to want my attention.”
We leave the dump and return to the shabby street outside. Omar moves to his truck and I grab my helmet off the seat of my bike. Azeria appears at the end of the block, holding a brown paper bag from a local convenience store. His look is distinct enough to recognize at once—beard tangled enough to be a bird’s nest and a forehead large enough to be considered a fivehead (even with the beanie he’s wearing stretched over it). He lurches to a stop, just about tripping over himself when he sees us.
The bag crashes to the ground. Its contents spill out. Azeria spins on his heel and sprints off. I’m faster on the uptake than Omar. My helmet slips out of my grasp as I charge after him. This fucker isn’t getting away from me. Not this time.
He cuts around a sharp corner that leads into an alleyway. Aluminum trash cans bang against the gravelly ground as he knocks them over as he goes. I round the same corner into the alleyway and leap over them no problem. I’m no professional athlete, but I’m in excellent shape and an experienced fighter. I’m fast, calculated, and most importantly,homicidal.
Azeria should be fucking terrified right now. His whole existence is over.
At the end of the alleyway, Azeria hops onto the ladder of a fire escape and stumbles up the metal rungs. I’ve closed the distance between us. As he fumbles up the ladder, I grab onto his legs and jerk him backward. I’m almost successful ripping him off.
He holds on just barely, but he does kick me in the chest. He’s on the top rung by the time I’m hoisting myself up onto the bottom one. Huffing out deep breaths, he staggers onto the fire escape platform connected to the building’s window and reaches into his coat.
The ugly Big Foot asshole has a gun. He fires at me. I flatten myself against the ladder, still undeterred. He’s a shitty shot. The bullets ricochet off the rungs, chinking the metal. Only the last one hits me—it zips past me and grazes my shoulder.
Azeria’s out of bullets and I’m bleeding as I continue lifting myself up. No graze is going to stop me. No amount of blood or pain.
He’s dived through the window by the time I make it onto the fire escape. I know even before I climb in after him that we’re in some kind of crackhouse-type apartment building. One even worse than the place he lives in. It reeks of trash and piss, and graffiti-tag decorates the walls of what seems to be an abandoned apartment.
The place should be condemned.
I’m barely through the window when a wooden board is swung at me. I duck out of the way, narrowly missing the hunk of wood. Azeria picked it up off the floor and is using it as his weapon since his shitty marksmanship failed him.
He swings again and I jump back. He’s not in the best shape, panting desperately for air. He swats the wooden board at me like he’s clutching a baseball bat. I block him with my forearm and come in closer for my first hit.
A gut punch that makes him sputter. He coughs and lifts the board overhead to attempt to smash it at a new angle. I grab hold of it and we wrestle for control. My shoulder burns in protest, but the pain during a fight has always been something I easily tune out—if anything, it’s more motivation to keep going.
Fight harder. Fight more brutally. Make the other person hurt even more.
Brute strength is all Azeria knows, because when he presses down and I push up, he’s got nothing else to do. He grits his teeth and tightens his grip on the board to jam it down further.
