Page 51
This might be the stupidest thing I’ve done.
This week.
Nobody goes to the Southside to hang out with necromancers. They’re mostly ex-Soviets or Eastern Europeans. Russians, Slavs, in Vuković’s case Serbian. They all look like Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises. They don’t have a sense of humor, nor a sense of morality. Still, I have some contacts there.
Sava parks in front of Vuković’s casino. Nova Belgrade rises from the street like a concrete fist, brutalist and unapologetic. It doesn’t try to impress you from the outside. It’s just a cold modern block of glass and cement planted in the Southside like a rock. Inside, though, it surprises you with marble floors, dim gold light and deep green leather furniture. There are worse places in this part of town, places filled with dirt and the stench of death. Even I wouldn’t go there. I walk to the bar and find a bartender polishing glasses like he’s been doing it since the Cold War.
“Is Dimitri working tonight?” I ask.
“He’s doing the tables,” he answers in the thickest Russian accent imaginable. “What do you want?”
“I’ll wait for him here.”
A few minutes later Dimitri, a Slavic boy with sad eyes, appears with a stack of empty trays. He sees me and nearly drops them.
“Lara. Hi. What are you doing here?”
“I came for a drink.” I slide a thick fold of bills across the bar. “Can you make me one?”
“Sure.”
He winks and moves us toward the far side of the bar, pretending to work while keeping his voice low.
“So,” he says. “What do you want?”
“Dead vampire bodyguards. Apparently found behind the Southside train tracks.”
His face changes. “Yes. I heard. Vuko is pissed.”
“Pissed?” I ask. “It wasn’t his job?”
“Lara.” Dimitri gives me a look like I’m insulting him. “If Vuko wants to kill someone, he parades the body in front of the whole city. He doesn’t need to do it quietly. He had no beef with Marcus.”
“What do people know?”
“It looked like necromancer work. Empty body shells. No souls. Not good.”
A hand catches my elbow before I can ask more. I turn and find Miloš there. My supplier. He pulls me away from the bar with enough force to bruise me, smiling like we’re old friends while dragging me toward a booth hidden from the main floor.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he hisses once we sit.
“I’m looking around.”
“Don’t.”
“Who killed the bodyguards?”
“Not us.”
“Then how do you let someone dump bodies on your territory?”
His expression hardens. “Watch yourself, girl.”
“Can you take me to the place?”
“What place?”
“Where they found the bodyguards.”
