Balthazar drifts into that warm bourbon nostalgia and the lobby fades, the noises of them trying to get Malik on the radio but he’s not answering dulls into the buzzing in his ears and he mind wander floats. Thirteen years ago: Old Vladko. Only one of these shitbirds at the hotel then or since was any good at chess. Russian, raised on it, played fast and downed Vodka shots chased with pickle or sausage out of crystal he’d brought in one day out the cold, a set of six, said they needed proper Russian vodka glasses. He’d line them up opposite side of the board from where he put down his taken pieces, and take a shot for every minute between when he’d make his move and the long consideration Balthazar would take and let linger before he fixated his next. And soon as he’d take his last finger off the piece on his turn, Vlad was calling his next, set, down, and done. None of these shitbirds before or since could play much, let alone hustle Balthazar.
Rufus admired the quiet principled nature of the Russian. The giant was unfailingly polite, was obvious he believed in things, had his own compass, and stuck to it. The whole “man’s gotta have a code” bit, and he could tell Vlad had one. Vladimir had returned the admiration and always addressed Balthazar with respect. The key to the friendship, and Rufus thinking now about how he missed it through the Bourbon, had been a mutual professional respect and politeness. Acting right and knowing your place in any given pecking order or food pyramid was something that Balthazar respected, knowing as he could that it’s easy to have panoramic perspective when you’re the one on top of your own professional pyramid.
The reason they could be friends was the differences between them. Balthazar, rare seen or felt to be gone from the Hotel 9 for long, was 13 years back and up to present, besides memory stuck and just a little bourbon slow, the big swinging dick of his trade. If there was what modern man would call an assassin on speed dial with parties from the criminal to the governmental and beyond, Rufus Balthazar was that killer. He earned every single one of his stripes, and a greybeard aging out of the trade had declared him The Prospector. Always on the underside of society, looking for the next most valuable target, the next bigger burlier job, the next paycheck he has to think and plan and execute with a perfect hand to keep himself a legend. Loves his pyramid, married to it, never gonna take a step down.
That’s why Balthazar never had quarrel, competition, or could find any reason to see Vlad as a possible threat. Vladimir Leonidov Krovopuskovic wasn’t on the same pyramid. Could tell by his walk, his talk, his carriage, manners, and his seeming inability to either feel or show any hint of weakness or fear. Vlad was on top of a pyramid his own, neighbor to Rufus. On the base of Rufus’ pyramid would be inscribed “assassin”, but on Vladkos carved in the base it would say “warfighter.”
Even as a regular, ol’ Vlada would be gone for set increments most times between when he’d go and come back, give or take a few days. On rotation. Three, six, eight, months, a year, and he’d ring the desk, reserve the same room, and show up the next day. Criminal? Certainly. Killer for money? Absolutely. But fully immersed in the elegant art of assassination for hire, that was not his bag. Man was searching for a war to die inside and he couldn’t find it, he told Rufus once. Balthazar had an eidetic memory for his professional history. Every job was a story he held dear, close to his chest. Idle and drunk in the late hours once Balthazar pegged Vlad as a warfighter, found out don’t call him a soldier, he was a soldier for Russia, and that ended bad. He preferred warfighter. Balthazar having pegged him as the predator he was had to ask him the big question between peers that kill for coin: bodycount? The question sent a look across Vladimir’s face absolutely alien. Rufus didn’t know it was the first time he’d been asked. Considered a moment at the time, downed an ice-cold cut crystal glass of vodka he’d brought for the hotel bar himself, and said “you count these things?” took a bite of pickle after the vodka.
Yeah, the Prospector is lost in that past. Happy to see an old friend on a night this rainy. Chuckling at the thought of what was stewing. Rufus was there when Vlad was banned from the premises, mostly on account of the Russian was proving near impossible to kill. Rufus had stayed out of it.
Vlad had made his reservation and showed up the same night 13 years ago. One thing that never happened, there was always a day's delay before he showed up. Except that time he rang, and two hours later walked in the front doors looking tired, went and reached across the desk and took his key. Reason why that window and them bars are up. Opened his door and seen the at the time desk man and concierge, who’d been much less annoying, more amiable, and took himself about a tenth as serious as Pinch does, raping one of the housekeepers. Taped up, bag on their head, arms zip-tied behind her, ass in the air and getting fucked bloody, trying her best to scream through a dirty sock, tape, and a black bag taped tight around her neck. Now, it had been a rumor but there’d never been anyone to catch the predator going off on people in the hotel until Vlad walked in on this poor waif doubled over, blood running down her thighs, pale skinny ass ramming a cock into her shitter. Stick it in raw and pull it out bloody, might as well be taking a cactus up you.
Story went Vlad put his bag down, pulled out a Glock, and misted the concierge’s brains out the front of his face. Didn’t pause, didn’t gape, didn’t do nothin’ flashy, no warning, just ended him. Checked on the girl, and dragged the concierge out and down to the lobby.
On books security took exception to the man who ran the front desk being dragged into the lobby in front of guests and all with his face a bloody flower in full bloom. Malik if Rufus’ memory serves protested the official comedown from the proprietor that Vladimir was to be disposed of. This started a small war in the hotel. The mismatched security staff’s problem at the time was they didn’t know where they stood on the food chain concerning the tall Russian. They didn’t know shit about a food pyramid.
After a short exchange of gunfire in the lobby that Rufus sat shaking his head through the Russian disappeared on them, turned into a spook. Ghostface Killer that nobody could see on a fuckin’ camera on any floor, in any stairway, in any room wired. They spent the better part of that evening trying to chase him down in teams while he picked off every single one of them soon as they’d get close enough to think they could peg him. Malik just followed his gut and ran into Vlad on instinct. Knowing his death had been ordered, and knowing that Malik was soft on his side, the Russian took initiative. When Titans fight it shakes the earth, and certainly it shook the hotel all the way until they’d beat shit out of each other back into the lobby. Rufus had never seen either of them close to winded, let alone torn to pieces, bleeding, covered in welts and slashes. Malik was bare-handed with a claw hammer, Vlad had been fighting him with a dagger, Gerber Mk2, Balthazar had noted at the time. Malik was not bleeding like he’d been properly contacted with the point of the knife. Plenty of slashes, forearms covered in shallow bleeding defensive wounds. Malik was fighting with a claw hammer, but hadn’t made contact hard enough to put down the Russian, who was fighting for his life. Still don’t know if that was on purpose or not, but Malik had let out a deep breath and dropped the hammer. Vlad had then taken a knee, seeing Malik drop the hammer, but had eyes straight on him. Then Malik reached to his back and pulled out his hatchet.
Russian knows chess, doesn’t lose, knew he was in check, face didn’t say it, but The Prospector had lost enough chess games to him to know it. He’d checked Vlada more than once, but a Russian doesn’t play that fast without having a gambit at the endgame, trumps to throw out right when you’re feeling good about your position on the board, then he’d take you off of it. Vlad came to his feet, digging in a cargo pocket, and pulled out four grenades, two frags, and two incendiaries dangling them by the pulls from his four fingers. “I would like to speak to the owner of the hotel Malik,” he said, “if that is possible.” That was mate. He was ready to turn himself and everyone in the lobby into chunks of burnt ends. Malik nodded and put away his hatchet. Vlad dangled the grenades, pins threatening to gravity release themselves until he was handed a phone.
Two minutes later he was persona non grata but besides that, alive and limping bloody out the front doors. Put up the ordnance after he was clear, shook Malik’s hand, and apologized, just business. Malik appeared to hold no ill will and retained his sympathy maybe. Vlad, the Prospector swears now, he smirked at Balthazar on the way out the door into the morning.
The security is still trying to hail Malik. Balthazar pulls himself back out of his own thoughts just in time for a ghost to sit down across the table from him and nod. “Balthazar, my friend,” Vladimir says, carbine held like soldiers of a certain very professional nature do, high, one hand on the grip, the other crossed top of the rifle, barrel angled down, ready to raise but day job level casual.
“People don’t sneak up on me Vladimir,” Rufus says.
“And you do not get beaten in chess. I did not sneak, you were in thought.” Vlad looks over at the security who won’t stop trying to get hold of Malik. Shouting into their radios. “They won’t find him. I passed Malik and gave him my best wishes. He was carrying something rolled in a comforter and wrapped neatly in tape over his shoulder.”
At the passing image Rufus laughs, “And what did your wife say to Malik?”
“She gave him a bow, like a ballerina, and kissed his hand. Thanked him and wished him her best.” This cracks Rufus and he laughs from belly-deep until he has to catch his breath and take a sip of his bourbon.
“You do have a firecracker there Vladko. Never mentioned her back then. How long you two been married?” The Prospector asks and orders vodka. He tells the bartender to dig in the back of the glassware, in the dusty past, find the cut crystal shot glasses, look like little chalices, and bring some olives and a bottle of Stoli. Vlad bows his head in thanks at the offer.
“Twenty years, we’ve been together, maybe a longer, but time escapes.” Vlad says. The barkeep ignores that he’s got an AK in the lobby and is kitted for World War 3, puts the shot glass, plate of green olives, and the bottle on the table, and keeps to himself. “And you are right, Xenia, she can be crazy, but she is not stupid, and she knows of Malik from stories.” Balthazar never pegged the Russian as a family man.
“You think he had you?” Rufus leans elbows on table and asks.
Vlad pours a shot, downs it, and pops an olive in his mouth. “It is no question, Malik was not even trying as hard as I was, and I was still almost brained more than once,” another shot, another olive, “No, he pulled the hatchet. His eyes, they didn’t want to, but also yes, I did not want to have to grab a handful of grenades to use as leverage.”
“Damn, rare is the man round here to make an admission of that nature Vlad. You’re a class act.” Balthazar raises his glass at Vlad and gets a terse head shake in return.
“The truth is the truth, It is no admission. In the field, there is only truth. You accomplish your objective or you don’t. You live or you die. There is no pride in this work.” Vlad shrugs and pours more vodka. He always could just drink the shit like water.
“I’d have a conversation about that with you any night that isn’t tonight. I think you’re bullshitting yourself Vlad.” Rufus surveys the lobby. “But, and if I may be so bold as to ask, where is your wife, of the disturbance on the third floor.”
Vlad pours another shot and asks Rufus if he could have the bar bring over one more of the crystal shot glasses, which he does, and it appears directly on the table. Vlad pours out two shots, “she will be joining us directly. But, you probably overheard on our arrival, and saw, she has, Xenia has a very deep flair for the dramatic.”
“Indeed, and is she a warfighter?” Rufus asks, and Vlad nods. “Of a different carriage, but yes. She is. What. She is the yin, uuh, to my yang.” The Prospector takes a sip of his bourbon and says that this sounds overly philosophical. “I am her temperance, her logic. You could say she is my…” he stops to think. “Xenia is my emotions, she is the art in me.”
“Well isn’t that a pretty way to put it that your wife is a crazy bitch,” Balthazar chuckles and they lift their glasses to clink. Balthazar drinks a sip, Vlad puts his back down, waiting for his wife.
The PA system snaps and crackles, making the low buzz noise of a speaker half-plugged in for a second. Security, the whole lobby that’s not Balthazar and Vlad, stop look around the room confused as spotlit deer.
A guitar lick hits loud as god in your ear. Enough to make Balthazar sober back up a drink. I’M AN ALIGATOR! Blasts soon after, David Bowie’s voice cocaine shaky. Vlad leans toward Balthazar and nearly has to yell “Santa Monica, Live, 1972, have you heard? This is an amazing recording.”
“Yeah,” Balthazar has to yell “she’s dramatic. Good taste though.” And Vlad nods.
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” Vladimir says and leans back. The only person Rufus has ever heard get the quote right.
David Bowie yells across the whole universe KEEP YOUR ELECTRIC EYE ON ME BABE, PUT YOUR RAYGUN TO MY HEAD! And Xenia rounds the corner at the top of the north stairs, against the wall, bent down, Kriss Vektor aimed at the floor, and she waits. This is when Balthazar glances and sees that Vladimir has in earplugs.
Xenia descends the first step, her silver hair now with blood in it, blood splattered on her mouth, slick with sweat and covered in fresh wet blood, not hers, handprints and places where people struggled under or against her wiped into the fresh streaked crimson on her tosro. The wobble-headed security retinue, one of them catches sight of this witch at the top of the stairs and pulls his pistol. Everyone who runs conventional security at the 9 Story Hotel has the standard issue Glock 19, just like most cops. A few bring their own tools, but most stick to what they get issued. You’d think security at the hotel would be less cush than it is, but the hotel has a way of being self-cleaning. Security is mostly redundant. And they’re all drawing their pistols and shouting, ond handed and shaking, two-handed with bad cradle, weaver, bad grips. Vlad and Balthazar are horrible critics.
Not one can bead her fast enough, but two of the six start to shoot anyway. Bullets smack the wall behind her, little dirty dusty farts and a little falling plaster. Xenia ducks and scrambles down a few steps, then pops up and empties twenty rounds in their direction for suppression. Three take .45 slugs, one drops dead, the rest scatter, and a few drop their pistols. Xenia slings the Vector behind her, hops down a step on one foot, pops up onto the grand stone stair rail with the other, and launches at the panicked hotel security. You’d swear she was on wires and it’s a puppet dance.
Vlad nods for Balthazar to pay attention please, “she’s a fast closer, it’s impressive.”
Knives out, screeching, she’s 150 pounds of cannon shot crossing the lobby into a confused bunch of greenhorn security guards. How unfair this meeting is about to be is hard to articulate, but then she lands, kerambit dragging across #1’s throat, arterial spray coming not a movie drip but a real live heart-pumping geyser. He drops clutching the wound and gurgling. She rolls out to her feet and is in the middle of the remaining four. She comes up putting her dagger, Balthazar notes, also a Mk 2 Gerber, like her hubby, into #2’s chest, between ribs, puncturing lungs and heart. He can’t scream, and goes over sideways onto the carpet of the lobby. She abandons the dagger. #3 lunges to throw a punch at her, it slides off her guard and she pivots, hooks under the punch with her arm that held the dagger, her left, and locks the clinch, his arm bends the wrong way and breaks at the elbow. He moves to grab at her face, uncovering his armpit, and she claws the karambit up into the large branch artery that takes blood from the heart down your arm. He’ll be two minutes bleeding out but between the broken arm and severed artery staining his whole shirt, he’s already woozy and fading. #4 has fumbled his pistol up off the floor and pointed it at Xenia. She turns PRESS YOUR SPACE FACE CLOSE TO MINE LOVE! And he empties two shots into the back of #3, who groans before she straight kicks him into #4, who drops his pistol out of reflex to catch #3, who’s dead on contact. guitar solo. Xenia steps left, pulls her dagger out of #2, who is dead, without looking, and jumps spawled on #3’s back, pinning #4 under him. When she drives the Gerber through his skull it makes a sick crack that the song covers. THE CHURCH OF MAD LOVE, #5 is on one knee his pistol recovered and leveled, farther than Xenia can close with him drawn and sighted, but just barely.
Balthazar almost doesn’t see it. Vladimir stands, raises the AK to his shoulder, and #5’s skull claps apart, flapping, a red mist puff and then he falls. IS SUCH A HOLY PLACE TO BE.
FREAK OUT
FAR OUT
guitar solo
Xenia stands up from her sprawl, struggling the stuck dagger out of #4’s skull. “I saw him, I knew he was there, I had him,” She doesn’t look, she yells. “But why should I get all the fun, my love?” Vladimir rolls his eyes.
“You’re impressive darling,” Vlad says.
“She’s fucking terrifying,” Balthazar says. “Yeah, yeah, she’s a warfighter.”
“Full of fishscale” Vladimir adds.
Xenia retrieves her knife and puts it back in sheath. The karambit has a complex mechanism that folds in on itself to an alien-looking oblong thing that fits in a pocket. She walks to them. Vlad motions that he saved her vodka, and she nods. “Za vstrechy” she says, and they echo, before she downs the Stoli. Xenia tries to eat an olive but is full of so much cocaine she can only manage to chew it up and spit it all over the floor.
Three women in lingerie are descending the south stairs. Disturbed, and annoyed, they may as well be vogueing their way over. “What the fuck?” one yells and another and the third.
“Technical difficulties,” Xenia yells. “Lobby closed for maintenance,” she motions for another shot. They’re already almost done with the bottle. Shooting broke out the few left in the lobby melted into the background and the shadows. “Get the fuck back to your room.” Downs another shot, chews and spits an olive out, mouth so numb she can’t taste a bit of it.
The trio of curvy ghost-pale women have descended the stairs. “We have business going on up there,” the one in front motions with a closed fan towards the ceiling. “And David fucking Bowie is coming up through the floor, you flat-chested bitch,” and Xenia’s attention is drawn.
She grabs the near-empty bottle of Stoli and swigs from it, approaching the trio. “You look like sisters,” she says.
“We are,” the one with the fan says. She’s taller than the other two, almost paler. A ghost woman. She’s only a C cup. Looks like she’s been whoring too long. All pretty curvy Kardashian fat but not a pound of muscle on her. Finger waves in her hair. Her sisters are dressed in vintage or imitation: lingerie, petticoats, floozie shit like this is a saloon in the old west, goods on display. Curvy legs in fishnets. They all have the same nose. Fair features. Cold dull eyes. Black pasties over six nipples. The two Xenia decides are twins have bangs and glossy blonde hair draped curtains just to below their shoulders. The older sister with the fan, she’s wearing a red silken gown or kimono or something, lots of embroidery. Xenia likes it.
“You real sisters?” Xenia asks and cocaine sniffs.
“We are, and could you turn down this fucking noise,” the older sister, taller, nice kimono thing, says.
“And you whore together?” Xenia asks.
“Why the fuck do you care you flat-chested psychopath, just turn off the music!” And big sister points her fan in Xenia’s chest.
Xenia looks down, then back up. “I like my tits, they’re perky and manageable. Fit inside class 3 body armor just fine.”
And the older sister asks her what the fuck she’s even talking about.
“And your sisters aren’t that chesty either, what are you, a 34C? At your height. What’s your BMI?” Xenia snorts and hocks something onto the floor that’s mostly cocaine. “I like your kimono thing.” another swig of the vodka.
“THE. FUCKING. MUSIC. BITCH. Are you stupid?” Big sister is yelling now.
Whole time Balthazar and Vlad just watch.
“Give it to me,” Xenia says.
“What? What the fuck?” the tall sister, the older sister says to her younger twins, cocks a hip out, flips the fan open, and starts fanning herself, “Who in the fuck do you even think you are, and THIS MUSIC!”
“IS DAVID FUCKING BOWIE AND HE IS A GOD!” Xenia continues the yell for her, “And I’m all for girl power and feminism and whoring is cool, great, I’m all sex-positive, get that money sister girls, right, but I’m doing this thing right now and you said my tits are ugly, and I know they’re not, and I want your kimono robe whatever” Xenia gestures at the robe with the hand with the bottle in it.
“I didn’t say your tits were ugly, you dumb bint, I said you’re flat chested,” Older sister with the finger waves in her hair like this is 1923 and the Great Gadsby says right as Xenia swings and plinks her in the side of the head with the bottle.
“I said I want your robe.” Xenia says and the girl staggers and groans. “If I say I want something, you give it to me, you hear, you Dumb BINT.” Xenia hits her in the side of the head with the empty vodka bottle again. Bottles, thick ones for spirits, really hard to break. Movies are movies, real life is real life. “My tits are amazing,” she hits her again and the porcelain girl slides to her knees, crumpling, “I’m bigger than you, stronger than you, faster than you,” her younger twin sisters are screeching and waving their hands in front of their faces, high drama, stageplay choreography almost “and I am on SO much cocaine, you cunt.” She winds back and swings the bottle underhanded, smashing the sister’s nose in flat, blood shoots, pouring onto the floor, and the girl screams. Xenia looks up at her twin sisters.
“Run,” she says. They’re crying and panicked, needing direction, their sister is just between a groan and a yell, a gurgle as the blood from her nose falls down her throat. “RUN, or I will kill you.” Xenia clarifies for them, and they turn two circles, hands waving, and head back up the south stairs, somehow making taking flight look like a dainty spectacle, screaming and crying all the way.
Xenia looks back at the sister on the ground and taps her with her foot. The light tap is enough it knocks her flat onto her back. “Yeah, you had nice tits,” Xenia says and the oldest sister is sobbing, nose flat, blood everywhere, teeth broken in too, a dent on the side of her head visible at the angle she’s laying at. Xenia mounts her. “I said you had nice tits,” And Xenia beats them with the vodka bottle, first smacking, then pounding with the bottom, until they’re bruised, skin bursting, yellow fat seeping, nipples black purple, and leaking blood. “Fuck you.” Xenia’s voice is venom. She cracks the girl in the face with the bottle again, caving in an orbital. “There are millions of you in the world,” on a roll with the preaching. She cracks her again, splitting a brow, again, a dent in the forehead, again, the dent opens into a gash, again, there’s a crack. Something in the sister’s wiring got fritzed because one of the dying girl’s legs starts to spasm. “And there is only ONE, of me” She pounds the thing that was a pretty face until it caves, a hard side on strike into the jagged bone shards and meat that was such a porcelain fashion model vamp meets golden age film star face that Xenia had to shatter like a child killing an unwanted doll finally breaks the bottle. In the middle. “And I kill gods,” Xenia says. She looks at the broken bottle like it’s a curious alien object, an artifact she can’t understand, shrugs, and plants its jagged broken side down in a tit, pushing herself up. Xenia struggles, grunting, and rolls and wrenches the robe off of the corpse she’s made. Puts it on and looks down the arms, straightens the front, cracks her neck and it pops, then lets out a long sigh. She turns and walks back towards Vlad and Balthazar.
“Darling” her voice breaks back smoky smooth and Tokidoki cute with just a thin strip of razor cocaine edge. “I need more vodka please.”
Balthazar leans into Vlad across the table. “Think you got yourself a bit more than just a fuckin' ‘warfighter’ there,” he says. Vladimir nods.