Greg Rucka - Walking dead

That I would never-could never-bring myself to follow through on my threat didn't matter. Arzu could imagine the horrors I threatened to visit upon his family, because Arzu could imagine himself doing the exact same things. What was beyond the pale to me was simply the way you did business to him. He believed me, because he still thought that we were alike.

"Theunis Mesick," Arzu muttered.

"Where do I find him?"

"Amsterdam." Arzu shook his head, angry. "I don't know where."

"You have a way to contact him," I said. It wasn't a question. "Tell me the procedure."

"You motherfucker."

"I can head over to your home right now. That what you want?"

"Fuck you! I have a number, all right? A phone number, it's for a landline somewhere, I don't know where. I leave a message for him, tell him I have a friend who'll be coming to town, give him a number. He calls me back, we set it up!"

I pulled out the BlackBerry again. "Give it to me. Now."

"I can't remember!"

"Try harder, Arzu Bey."

He closed his eyes, struggling to recall the number, then slowly recited a string of digits. I punched them in, dialed, then put the phone to my ear, waiting for it to connect. It rang twice, and then a man's voice answered me in Dutch.

"Hallo?"

"I'm looking for Theunis," I said, in English. "Theunis Mesick."

"He is not here now," the man said. "You leave a message, a number, I will tell to call you back."

"I'll try again later."

I hung up, began replacing all of my things in the carry-all, all the tools, the laptop. I removed the remaining envelope of money, put the handcuff key inside it, then dropped it on the ground. All the while, Arzu was shouting at me.

"You got what you want? You fucking have what you want, you happy, you fucker? You motherfucker! You fucking stay away from my family! You stay away, you stay away from my boys, I will kill you! I will kill you myself, I will fuck your corpse you touch them, you go near them again!"

I zipped the carry-all closed, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and turned to face him. He was breathless, going hoarse in his outrage.

"You fucking stay away from my fucking family!"

There was nothing that I knew about the man in front of me that I liked. Nothing about him that I could think of worth preserving. He kept, bought, and sold slaves. He had sent men to my home to murder me, and in so doing, had nearly cost me Miata, Alena, and a child I hadn't known existed.

What I needed to do now, I knew, was kill him.

"Arzu," I told him, "if I have it my way, you'll never see me again."

I left him there to shout in the darkness, screaming threats and promises that I hoped he'd never be able to keep.

Twenty-five The number Arzu had given me was for a fuck factory off Marnixstraat. It took two phone calls and almost exactly twenty-four hours to arrange a meeting with Theunis Mesick there. I was in a hurry to make up for the time I'd lost in Trabzon, and went directly from the airport in Amsterdam to meet him.

Mesick was another of the thug brigade, big the way Vladek Karataev had been big, but blond and younger, maybe in his early to mid-twenties. He wore leather pants and a muscle shirt that showed off full-sleeve tattoos on both arms, elaborate skin art that had been thrown together without rhyme or reason, with naked women and death's-head skulls and bleeding roses. I dropped Arzu's name along with two hundred euros, saying that I'd been told he could help me find "the right girl." The combination was enough to buy a trip across town in his company, to a houseboat moored just off the Nieuwe Herengracht canal.

Things were going well, or at least I thought they were, right up to the moment we stepped into the living room of the boat. Then Theunis Mesick turned on me with a knife in his hand.

I was jet-lagged and feeling ragged already, and I paid for it in reaction time. His first cut caught me high on my right forearm, going deep as I tried to get out of the way. The arm went numb with shock for a second as I backpedaled. I was still carrying the small duffel full of my belongings on my shoulder, and I swung it around with my left to block the next stab, and it worked, but he batted the bag away and then I had nothing left.

Knives suck, and fighting someone who has one sucks even worse, because there's no way to survive without getting cut, and I already had one to show for it. For some reason, people think of knives as somehow less dangerous, less lethal than firearms, and it's a bullshit and very dangerous assumption, because, like guns, knives are lethal weapons. Knife fights are something that happen between the Sharks and the Jets, that's it.

Everywhere else, it's not a fight, it's just someone trying to goddamn kill you.

I stumbled backward, trying to backpedal to the door, the way I'd entered. He didn't give me the time, slashing repeatedly for my throat with sharp, quick cuts. It wasn't a particularly long blade, maybe two inches at the most, but two inches of steel will kill just as easily as six. I knocked over furniture, scrambling to the side. There was a vase of tulips on the coffee table, and I kicked that at him as I went past, and it missed, and he drove forward at me again, jabbing repeatedly. He knew enough about using the knife to keep it moving. I managed to grab one of the cushions off the couch, put it between us as a shield. The cushion was purple.

"What the fuck?" It came out of me as a gasp.

"Arzu doesn't give out my name," Mesick answered, and he came at me again.

I used the cushion, tried to catch the knife with it, but again he kept the blade moving, refusing to let it sink. He punched with it repeatedly, and I put a kick out, hit one of his legs, but I missed the knee, and the most I got out of him was a readjustment to the side. I moved right, trying to get away from the blade, losing the cushion as he swiped the knife beneath its edge. The tip caught me on the left side of my abdomen, and I felt the pain of my skin peeling and separating.

It had been maybe six seconds, and already I was bleeding from two separate wounds. He was going to cut me to pieces.

This is why I fucking hate knives.

There was a table, maybe for dining, the only thing on it an ashtray. I threw it at him, and it missed, but I followed the ashtray with the table itself, and he had to move to avoid it. Then I followed the table, trying to keep my arms in to protect my vitals, leading with my left hand extended. The knife came around again, split my palm, but before he could bring it back I was inside his guard, my right hand gripping the wrist holding the knife, pinning it against him as I slammed my body against his. We crashed back into a bulkhead, and I smashed my forehead into his face twice, and the second time felt my glasses snap at the bridge. I followed with a knee between his legs, and he still wouldn't let go of the fucking knife. He brought his free hand up to my throat, driving a thumb into my Adam's apple, and I got my bleeding left to his face, hooked my thumb in his nostril, pushing a finger into his eye. He howled, moved off my throat, trying to break my grip where I was threatening to tear his nose from his face, and that put his hand in front of me.

I bit him, hard, breaking the skin at the back of his hand, feeling my teeth meet.

He screamed.

He also dropped the knife.

I let him go, stepped back, hoping that would be enough. It wasn't. He was going for the knife again, bending to reach it, and I let him try, then kicked him in the face. He rocked back, dazed, and I kicked him again, and then once more for good measure.

He slumped and stopped moving.

I kicked the knife clear, then thought that wasn't going to be enough and picked it up myself. My hand was shaking, and I fumbled the grip the first time, had to steady myself before I could actually do it. Oddly, I wasn't feeling too much pain at the moment. Once the adrenaline ran itself out, that would change.