Snowy chapel. Footprints leading to and from oaken doors. A large grey dog chained up at the railing barking and howling. A figure out on the ice covered with a white sheet. Nametha ran out, wires still attached to nodes on her skin. She released the dog and it went crazy, ripping at the sheet with its teeth.
 
Soon there was a semi-circle of men around Nametha and the dog and the pale body, all chanting in Russian. The black spires above gleamed with the first morning light and soon a beam from the sun shone directly on the slumped figure’s white skin. The skin smoked and bubbled and charred, until the skeleton was exposed and quickly incinerated by the light of day. All that remained were some tattered white sheets and two rings half-buried in the vampire’s dust.
 
Nametha took the rings, buffed them with a pocket handkerchief, and slid them onto her bony fingers. She grinned a wide grin of crooked, crowded teeth, and spun around, heading straight up the stone steps right into church.

Glad I found you here. I’d like you to take your monkey and get back on the boat.

She turned and the monkey climbed up the sleeve of her sweater to hunch on her shoulder, clutching her auburn hair. I’m not going back.

Maybe this will change your mind –?? My hand went to an empty holster. I could only watch as the monkey handed her my pistol.

She fired, blowing my right kneecap to dust. I dropped to the ground, just managing to grab her ankle as she went to leave. Falling to one knee she fired again, blowing my wrist apart. She got back to her feet, my disembodied hand still clutching her ankle, and went out the door, her high heels click-clacking down the stone steps.

With my left hand I pulled my t-shirt over my head. I’d just managed to get the shirt tied around my right arm when I blacked out.

Later I pulled myself groggily up to the balcony railing. I looked down and saw her. She hadn’t made it far. She lay splayed out, my amputated hand still encircling her ankle. Dried blood spidered through the cracks between the cobblestones. The monkey sat with his hand in her hair. He saw me and let out a savage shriek.

The guards appeared and looked up to the balcony before I could limp away. They fired a few shots and I did one of those over-the-balcony death summersaults you see in movies. I landed in a crumpled heap. The monkey came over and in my last few second of life I felt him licking my ear. I went to grab him with my phantom hand. Then a curtain of blood obstructed my vision. I passed out. Soon after, I died.

Epilogue:
The monkey sat with me for a few hours before eventually climbing up a nearby hill and returning safely to the jungle.

It’s funny if you think about it. Two goons like us getting all this money. Charlie couldn’t stop talking about his girl Esmeralda and how much he was gonna give her. Esmeralda took some of it, sure, but most of it went to his Mom living in the loony bin and his little brother Marcos who’d been on the street his whole life. I took my part and went down the dock and bought a boat, this big long sloop. I’d go out at night with it and just float. Lean on the railing and look back at all the little lights sparkling off the bay.

Marcia came out once with me and a couple other girls but hardly anyone wanted to hear about the big trip up North I had planned. I’d always drop them back off at the wharf and watch as they walked away down the planks. My sloop floated back out to sea with me in it, determined to start a new life in the northern country and leave behind all the mooks and chumps.

My course started just fine- a light breeze from the South, skies bleached white. One or two gulls really high up. By noon I had my coffee and let the white sea and sky clear my head of all the crummy baggage.

But as I watched, the white water rose up out of nowhere and exploded like a tremendous hand above me, arcs of water like fingers crashing down around me.

Suddenly my boat was two hundred feet up. Then I was deep underwater, watching as a giant sea turtle came towards me through the splinters of my shattered sailboat. I reached out and took hold of the turtle’s fin. He drew me quickly through the current then turned to look back at me with the face of a wise old man. No more mooks, I thought, grinning, as he pulled me into the darker and darker water.