The silver Ferrari pulled onto a misty midnight ferry to Vashon Island. Brian was surprised to see at least a dozen other cars making the trip. Brian didn't like ferries. He was a prominent lifestyler among the area vampires and ferries were a violation of their nature. It was a personal jab by David to make him meet an unknown contact out here, like this, especially after playing taxi to his girlfriend.

He stayed in his car and pulled a cigarette. His violent thoughts of David were shattered by his attention on a tall thin man in a military trench coat walking straight towards him. The blond hair and vertical red scars striping the face left no doubt to the identity of tonight's contact, and also told him that David was going ahead with his plan. Brian began to sweat and stepped out of his car.

The man called Slim Jim was only here for one thing - carnage for hire. Slim Jim was a Russian, but had spent most of his life in Istanbul. He was worse than your average mercenary, he only took jobs which promised bloodshed. He was also unreliable, known to ignore his orders whenever it suited him, and prone to random violence.

Jim walked up to the Ferrari and opened the brief case from David on the roof. He counted through 30 troy ounces of fine gold and stared a long moment at the label on a bottle of wine included inside. There was also a small card with an ip address and PGP code, a stuffed money clip, and a ring of about ten keys.

"Been a long time, Brian, still ripping throats for David, eh?"

"And for myself. - It hasn't been long enough, Jimmy - I'll see you dead this time, either during the job or afterwards - you shouldn't be here."

"No, it's you who don't belong - don't forget that! This is our fight, David and Me. And it'll be me running things on our end too, so don't forget that either." A hard stare and Slim Jim walked away with the case. Brian let him go, thinking about the deaths he owed him.

Slim Jim had worked with David a lot in some previous life, and there was no fathoming their relationship, but he made Brian feel expendable and that couldn't be good...

- - - -

[Friday Morning.]

Steve and Bill walked up to the desk at the Radisson where Mr Le was staying and Bill called the room.

"Hello, Mr Le? This is Lt. Bill Perry, I'm down here with Cpt. Steve Greene, you ready? ... Can we come up to your room? ... 324 ... Ok, we'll be right up."

The room was poorly lit, Bill and Steve sat on the dirty yellow couch across a littered up coffee table from Mr Le. There was an unidentifiable odor tainting the air in the room.

"My brother is dead. My sister-law, dead. My cousins, her family, their children, dead. Now my nephew, last, is dead. Time for Mr American police to listen to old man, Mr Sang Mi Le. I tell you ... hmm ... ghost story ... you not like I don't care - you listen to old man, surrounded by dead family."

It seems that Mr Le knew the werewolf. Le was part of a Chinese colony in Canada that had traveled from Buryat in SE Russia less than a year ago.

"50 years ago my brother find a young Russian child live by himself on the East side of Lake Baykal. They bring into their home and began call him Nikita. When he learn speak the language they find out that he is down from the Baykal mountains on the far side of the lake, but he never remembered any thing - just seeing the lake and coming down to it.

Nikita was growing to be a big man when, teenage he killed a group of other teens in my people community and ran off. For while he had lived in warehouse and shops he break into stealing only food and supplies, but never being caught. He only visit with a girl - Chen Kim, but she afraid of Nikita and he soon stop seeing her.

After a few months hiding, he start stealing money and valuable things, and then the killings began. Nikita kill three men who had lay a trap for him, but then Nikita starts killing people he feel threatened - fathers and brothers of the boys he has killed. He would attack them in lonely places or in home when they asleep.

When many people killed, whole community go out in vicious man hunt, go house to house with all kinds of weapons, kitchen knife, club, some with shotguns, rifles. When Nikita show himself, he has a knife at Chen Kim throat. He get shot in the shoulder, and then the whole mob attack. Shots rang out - all over, young Chen was hit with many shots and collapsed in the bloody snow, but Nikita ran into the night bleeding all over.

It was about 20 years later when Nikita returned. He came at night to my brother's house, I was living with them then. He looked more like a young man still in his early 20's than mid 30's and he was had a hard look about him that scared us. Nikita told us that he had died in the snow that night, and had found himself in an unfamiliar street. He had been in Pyongyang, North Korea 2,000 miles away. He also told us that he discovered that he had no blood left in his body, and so we know he is ghost.

He gives my brother all papers to sign, gives him bag full gold triangles, 'for you', and give him the ruby necklace, very expensive, million dollar, 'for me - you must keep, if you lose, I kill you, your wife, your family'.

Next, one year ago, my brother sell necklace, move all our people here to Canada. Now, American New Year, Nikita return to my brother. My brother turn around and Nikita is there in his home, still look like young man - he should be 60! Nikita ask now for necklace - give brother one month. Now, you know, they are all dead. Only different - now when he kill them, he is as you see, a wolf devil."

Bill looked at Steve who gave a shallow nod and exhaled. This wasn't going to help much...

- - - -

Kim and David were running full sail NNW for a day of whale watching. The "Sea Wolf" was designed especially for tracking, following, and swimming with the orcas or "killer whales" that so densely occupy the waters just outside the coastline. The Sea Wolf was actually a whale watcher's dream boat. It was a fully modern 45' wooden cutter, capable of spending extended periods on open sea.

The Sea Wolf was luxuriously outfitted for single operation, but could have easily slept five. She looked like a nighthawk. She was sleek and low, all of a beautiful dark red wood which was almost a black with red grains. This was highlighted by all the doors, furniture, and chests on board being a dark cherry. Her mast was solid black, as were all the lines and tackles, and the cloud-white sails seemed to be pulling on a vertical silhouette. Inside, the Sea Wolf was as comfortable as could be imagined, and more roomy than one would have thought possible.

Kim had sailed some, but not in the ocean or on a full sized boat. David was showing her everything, casually, as it needed doing or if he thought she might find it interesting. When they sited the orcas Kim was amazed, terrified, and then just thrilled as David sailed right along with the school of at least 15 of them. They seemed almost as big as the sailboat and were a lot faster. David said you could find them in any sea in the world and that they ate anything from other whales to seals, fish, divers, and small boats. They were the real sea wolves. Real wolves, he mentioned incidentally, also ranged the entire globe and had a similar appetite. David showed her how to track them on the SONAR/GPS logging program, and how to predict their route, even how to select forecasted routes from the database and compare their current location.

After a few hours of watching the whales they retired to the side, leaving the magnificent animals in peace for a while. They dropped sails and anchor, then David danced her into the cabin. She had always made love to David in the dark night, now they made love in the daylight, in the open sea - the salty mist breezing through the open portals and the boat rocking and dipping beneath them. They made love without inhibition, without restraint, separated by the sea from all the rest of humanity and separated by time from anything else in their lives.

- - - -

Kim lay on top of the sheets and listened to the ocean while David was in the galley, making them a late lunch. She moved slowly, dropping her feet to the floor. She slipped into her shorts, but left her shirt off. She winked past David, fumbled at her purse on the counter and went back on deck. He watched her go. Kim made her way to the back of the boat and got into the open tool locker for a hammer. Next, she moved around to the front of the boat and walked onto the top of the cabin and up to the mast. It took three strokes of her hammer for the red nail to be permanently embedded in the mast. It took about that long again for David to be beside her.

"I'm not collecting nails on my mast."

"Damn Straight! - I'm not leaving you David - ever, but I won't share you either."

"I would never ask you to, are you so sure of what you want? You don't even know me."

"It's too late for me, David. Look at the nail, it's there already. You took me, you raped me, stole me from my life, and now - I'm not going to leave you. Maybe it sounds stupid or naive, but you're all that I really want anymore - everything else is like a memory, or a dream I can't quite remember. You're all I have left that's real... and... David, tell me I haven't just wasted my life... I want to hear it from you..."

He took her in his arms, held her, but not too long before he whispered 'yes' and took her down to the deck.

- - - -

That afternoon they talked. They were still out, but were rapidly coming up on Vancouver Island.

"We've known each other for three days. I said you don't even know me, let me tell you some things. First off, I'm not an American. I am from Russia and North Korea. I only learned English when I went to school in Athens. It was in Greece that I began sailing, and met a lot of interesting people. You should know that I've been fighting most of my life, I'm a seasoned killer, a smuggler, a thief, a mercenary - this side of me has no compassion, and I'm at war. I'm a bloody man, Kim, and I deal with a lot of bloody people. I'll never be free of it, and I wouldn't choose to be.

But you already know a side of me most people will never know. You know that I can love, that I do love beautiful things, my wines, my music, you. I was never looking for love, or for commitment, but I'm no fool to refuse what you're offering, something I've not been offered for a long time. I'm not going to pretend that we need to wait first. Love is borne of a moment, and not something I would trifle with. How will you have me? As a lover - for as long as we can make it last, or as a husband - for better or worse, till death do us part?"

Kim looked at the sea, looked back at David, time paused and Kim went a little numb as she took in the boat, the breeze, her shallow life lost in the vast depths of David's life.

She turned the question back to him, "I meant what I said, how do you want it to be?"

"Then I'll take you now, right now, as my wife. I won't marry you, you'll have to be satisfied with my word, just as I'll depend on yours. I am wealthy, I'm rich by anyone's standards - blame the fall of the Soviet Union. Tomorrow I will pay you a dowry of your weight in gold, but tonight - I have something for you now. We've got to stop the boat for a minute."

When they had brought the boat to a stop, David scanned the horizon, and then went into the boat. Suddenly a large part of the decking popped up a fraction of an inch and David came back out. He took a funny crowbar out of the tool locker and lifted the panel off, revealing a large aluminum case, about three times the size of a footlocker.

He held a finger up to his lips, "shhh...", and opened it. Inside was a rack of wine bottles, a pair of small metal boxes, and another large metal case. He removed one of the smaller cases, closed the lid, and replaced the decking. He carried the case back in to the cabin, the deck clicked back down flush, and David came back out and presented the case to her.

"A first gift, to my new wife...", with a unreadable smile.

Kim opened the case and almost collapsed. Inside was a ruby and sapphire necklace that only a queen or an empress could wear. As she lifted the huge gold set ruby some part of her started crying profusely, and then as always, David was there, holding her. He put it on her, kissed her forehead, and then kissed her.

"You wear that, wear it until you get used to it! Ok, time to get moving again, we can't stay out tonight."

"David? What was in the other boxes?"

"Those were Pandora's boxes, you probably don't want to know."

She waited.

"Well, ok, the other small box has a case of CD's, a few custom IC chips, and about 3 million dollars worth of loose gems - they all belong to someone else. The wine bottles are filled with some specially processed opium that's really good for mixing into drinks - there's some in the apricot wine we've been drinking. Any bottle marked 'private collection' at the club has about a teaspoon of it. The big case - it's got some rather unique body armor in it, not something I'd like you to be curious about."

"Late tonight I have a meeting to make, then in three days we'll go on a little trip, when we get back from that we can have a proper honeymoon..."

- - - -

[Friday Night]

Out of the dark Audi stepped a tall blond man with deep scars running down his face. Slim Jim looked at the sign, "Red Nails", and realized immediately that this would be Brian's turf - so be it, he was working for David. The man at the door opened for him automatically, as if he were a regular, but he paused before he went in. He hadn't expected this - the room was darker than he would have liked for a space so big, and the clutter of gravestones among the tables made visibility even worse. The place was a death trap, and the cemetery decorum got under his skin in a bad way, then he started seeing the names - it was a clear message from Brian. He looked around the room, near the center was a spindly little spiral stair going down. As he moved towards the tiny stair case, not much bigger than a table, he could hear pauses in conversation from some of the tables. A second glance showed him what he failed to notice before, that more tables were sporting 'business men' than couples or groups of college kids.

One older gentleman got up from his table and walked right to him, "excuse me", as he pressed a key in his hand and walked past towards a nearby bar. The key fit the door at the top of the stairwell.

Slim Jim scanned the meeting room. David, Brian at his right hand, he saw Cody, Marc, some of Brian's goons he recognized but didn't know. Cody was David's man and a pilot with a serious commitment to his men on the ground. Marc would be working directly with Jim on the prep work in the field - Marc was also a destructive force in a brawl or a firefight and would be with Jim when the shit hit the fan. A map of Vancouver was on the wall, and all marked up, but the red circle had moved East maybe a hundred miles, the new location was still good, actually it should be even better... he walked up to David.

David gestured him around to the place on his left and rang his glass a few times, the silence was immediate.

"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Prince Nikita Peter Dreshevsky, lately arrived from his glorious city of Istanbul to grace our little endeavor with his esteemed presence."

There was a subdued general laughter and David continued.

"Slim Jim will be heading up all prep operations on site, and will be coming in the front door with Marc and myself."

Jim sat down. David started in earnest, the plan sounded simple enough - the annihilation of an isolated community of civilians by trained professionals, Jim noticed the parts David didn't mention and wondered who knew and who didn't, or even if he was the only one, the men covering the perimeter would think they had a choice job, and had no clue about how slim their chances were... Jim knew a meeting with just David and Brian would follow, and after Brian left he and David would go on, well into morning. He opened his notebook and settled into the meeting.

Meanwhile, Brian watched him, wondering exactly what kind of 'prep operations' Slim Jim would have waiting for him and his men. He looked old, he could have been in his fifties or even sixties, but Brian knew what he was like in combat, he shot like a sniper, cleared rooms like a SWAT commander, and fought like a samurai. Brian also knew there was more than a professional relationship between David and Slim Jim - theirs was the unstated reason behind this whole job.

- End of Chapter Four. -