Read Online Zero Saints by Gabino Iglesias - Free Book Online Page B

he was there and who had sent him, I would be in even deeper trouble.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “These men, Nando, they are all working for a man who has black eyes. They are full of very plokhoy chernila. My father, he told to me stories of a man like that when I was growing up, a man who lived alone in the woods with a dog and never aged. He would come out of the taiga once in a while and go to town to buy vodka and bread, never something more. No one looked this man in the eyes because they sometimes looked black when he returned the stare. When someone went missing who didn’t have any trouble with anyone, people always said that the black-eyed man took them, that he ate their heart and trapped their dusha. They said that kept him young, the blood, the killing. My father said the man had made a deal with Tchort and was no longer human, that he was a monster that belonged to hell. I never believed him, but a few years after my father’s death I came across this man while walking with my mother. He looked at her and winked. Then he stuck his tongue out, and incredibly long tongue, and moved it like at snake at my mother. She saw him, closed her eyes, and touched the rosary around her neck. She stood still and prayed with her eyes closed. She did not want to look at him. It was the first time in my life I had seen my mother afraid. It was not a good thing to see. I looked at the man and tried to ignore my mother, tried to be tough, like a man should be when someone scares the people he carries inside always. I wanted to hurt this disrespectful man, but then he looked back at me and his eyes turned black, like a…krovoizliyaniye of darkness. Seeing his eyes turn black made me feel very cold inside and out. It was like all the cold, dark nights, all the dangerous animals and hard ice of the taiga lived inside him and he could make me feel that with only a look. I was very scared, okamenela. Bad, bad feeling. I did not hurt the man. I was a coward. I took my mother’s arm and walked away. I could hear my mother’s prayers and the man’s laugh as I walked away. He was the only man I had ever walked away from until now.”
    The Russian stopped and took a deep breath before continuing.
    “I think these men you are having troubles with are like that man. They have made a deal with Tchort and you should not try to mess with them. Go away, ischezat’. Give them what they want. Just get them away from you and keep them away. Nothing good will happen if you go after them. What they have inside, it is not human. You can not kill things that are not human with bullets or knives.”
    Back to square one. And this time around, I didn’t even have a plan.
    “I…I don’t know what to tell you. I guess I should thank you for looking into this. I didn’t know it was going to…turn out this way.”
    “Temnaya magiya, Nando. This is what these men are into. You don’t want to make men that deal with this angry because they can hurt your body and your dusha. Whatever this is about, walk away.”
    The Russian hung up. I felt lonely and scared. I knew what I had to do, so I got up and walked to my Santa Muerte statue.
    I’d left the papers Consuelo had given me next to the statue. I lit up the second candle and read the prayer for the second day of the novena.

 
    Novena a la Santa Muerte
    D í a 2
     
    Santa Muerte, mi gran tesoro, no te alejes en ninguna ocasión: comiste pan y de él me diste y como Dueña Poderosa de la Negra Mansión, de la existencia y de la vida, Emperatriz de las Tinieblas quiero que me hagas el gran favor de apartar a Indio y a su gente de mi camino, que aquel que me desea mal sufra lo mismo que me desea y que la gente que quiere verme mal tenga que llorar de angustia al verme triunfador. Estos son los favores que humildemente te pido, esperando que se cumpla a la mayor brevedad. Que así sea.
    Praying helped a bit, just like it always did, but knowing that I had to get dressed and go talk to