A hail of bullets from the terrorists behind cover chased him to his apple tree.
Garin heard terrorist rifles rounding the garage and the bullets did not seek him but the terrorists hiding in the neighbor’s yard. Garin’s arm healed enough that he picked up his gun and shook the dirt and blood from it. Garin’s phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket from habit and grimaced. Caller ID said ‘K Branoc’.
“Get over here when I start this next gun,” Branoc tossed the first empty rifle to the grass and hung up. His pistols hung over the back of his belt. He picked up a pair of terrorist rifles and pointed them around the corner of the garage, the first at the kitchen and the second across the yard at the vampires holding Garin down. The guns spewed a river of metal hitting the vampires hard and pushing them back. A blur and Garin crouched behind Branoc. Branoc raised the rifle tips and spun behind the garage wall.
“Where’s Anna?”
“They took her.”
“Who? The militia or the terrorists?”
“A third group. Girls in black jumpsuits.”
“How are we to find them?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The militia members behind the stainless refrigerator fired at the terrorists they saw in the neighbor’s yard. The terrorists returned fire.
“Let’s take the car to my house,” said Garin.
“As good as any plan.”
They ran to the car. Branoc stopped as he crossed Brett’s body lying in the gravel. The vampire sensed life. He grabbed Brett’s shirt and picked him up as he moved around the car in a crouch. The terrorists now too intent on the militia members.
“Get in the back Garin. You need to repair him.”
Branoc stuffed the body into the seat. Brett’s head flopped around but his neck seemed unbroken.
“I really don’t like this guy.”
“Because Anna accepts his attentions? Get over it.” Branoc got in the driver’s seat and dropped the rifles on the passenger cushion with their barrels in the foot well. “He may be useful later.”
The remaining terrorists moved quickly toward the kitchen. As they neared, the militia hiding behind the kitchen appliances tossed several vampire grenades. The grenades landed in the once living room the terrorists approached through. Some of the terrorists slipped over the ledge of the remains of the large picture window. Some used the heavy oak of an old Victrola wedged holding up the ceiling roof joists amid baffles of dripping insulation and flames.
The pancake-like grenades bounced and sprang up to neck height and exploded with violence and fire. A second set of grenades the militia set lower before throwing so it jumped to crouching height and removed the heads of several more vampires. Pieces of shrapnel dug into the stainless refrigerator and the cabinets. The militia laid flat on the floor. They grabbed their modified crossbows from the protected corner and rushed at the terrorists.
They killed two more vampires. The last remaining vampire terrorist leaned around the Victrola and killed one of the militia. The two militia members still alive dropped to their knees and fired from pistols holstered at their sides. Their rounds sliced through the oak and expanding into wide slugs that knocked the vampire around disorienting him. The militia moved around the Victrola and fired two more shots at the vampire severing its neck. The head dangled as the body fell. The vampire’s hand opened and a traditional grenade rolled from its dead fingers.
The humans couldn’t move fast enough through the fire and smoke and dead bodies. The grenade flashed steel splinters tearing flesh and cracking bones. But the two men remained alive. They crawled and dragged themselves back through the kitchen and to the vans in the driveway. A trail of blood marking their path.
A young woman in a black jumpsuit squatted at the side of the driveway. She put her finger to the surface of a fat drop of blood and raised it to her tongue. “Mmm. Still fresh.” The militia heard her words and frantically sped their wounded crawl toward the vehicles. She came closer and swept them into her arms, plunging her fangs into the first one.
Even with face paint and her hair pulled back, he recognized her, “Claire –”
“Goodbye Bruce.” She knew the pain would go away. Filled with an ecstasy that made slipping away easier. As his blood rushed into her mouth, the delicious tang of hot iron, she flashed on a memory of the vampire that came out of the shadows and drank of her so long ago. Like an ancient broken wolf on the hunt, he had stalked her. Her blue robe fluttering in the dim night before the moon rose free of the horizon. The sounds of the innocuous clicking from a walking stick and the soft swipe of threadbare leather shoes worn by a haggard, decrepit old man approached her on the path. His watery gray-black eyes distracted her as he came close, before his strong fingers twined in her black hair. The excruciating bite that pierced first her wrist and then her throat. Calling out would not help; she came toward her home outside the village but yet still too far for anyone to aid her. The world swooned. But then a second vampire rushed out of the shadows and fought the first. A magnificent creature, old and powerful. But she lay dying beside the dirt path with painful erratic heart beats while her blood continued to bubble from the jagged wound at her throat. Like two wolves fighting over a nearly dead deer, they circled and struck each other in a furious flashing storm. Then the second vampire won her as his prize. He came and she remembered how her weak body did not care that he drank her. But he did not leave her body for the ravens. He revived her. He turned her into the undead before he disappeared into the shadows. She awoke as this mighty vampire with power that flayed any before her path. But he also left her with the need to feed. The hunger. A hunting wolf with fangs that rip and rend.
Claire dropped their bodies next to the truck wheel. The odor of rubber and traces of oil and gasoline filled the air around the machine. With the tall hedges, the neighbors only saw the two bodies’ slump to the pavement. She faded into the shrubs and then the forest.
Sirens from police and fire departments finally peeled through the darkness.
-:- Fifteen -:-
They ran through the forest with the same speed Garin raced with me around the peninsula when we escaped the cowboy vampires. The wind whipped the bag clutching at my throat and battered my ears while my clothes fluttered along my body like skydiving. How far did they take me? Would anyone be able to find me?
They slowed. The splash and wet foam of water touched my body. Then they sped up again. Branches brushed like whips against my body. The crushing grip of the vampire and bouncing on an unforgiving shoulder became too much and I lost sense of anything else to locate myself. The water could be a clue if not so many small tributaries became the wide Rouge River nor the nearly infinite number of small lakes and marshes left over from the glaciers that scoured this part of the globe ten thousand years ago.
They could be taking me in a big circle and to a house near my sister’s. Or to a warehouse across town or any number of remote destinations. No car motors, no noisy freeways, no barking dogs. Only the buffeting wind along the zigzag path they took between trees as they pushed forward.
The cool dampness of the forests continued lashing me with branches that kept my attention. The cutting cold of nightfall already filled the low spots in the forest. We traveled too far and too long.
They didn’t seem intent on killing me and must have other plans.
Fear welled up from the pit of my battered stomach.
They slowed. The vampire carrying me flopped me to the ground.
My feet and hands crunched through dried leaves and pressed into the soft loamy soil. We must still be in the woods. Somewhere. One of them yanked my arm and body to standing.
My head fluttered faint and disoriented. My ears ached. Sweat stuck my hair to my face inside the black bag. Goosebumps from the chill prickled my arms. My knees wobbled and I would have fallen except for a severe pinch of a hand on my elbow holding me upright by my arm.
“Valk.” the voice holding me ordered. The voice could be
any number of Eastern European dialects. Not that I had ever been there but I recognized it from the movies. She pushed me forward. I stumbled over loose rocks and the uneven ground littered with both dry and damp leaves. Walking on a creature left for dead to rot in the wilderness. Might I soon be joining it?
I heard other footsteps besides my own. Fanned out in a wave of vampires. None of them stumbling and shuffling with my dazed and blinded stuttering gait. Swift and sure and exact. Sometimes barely a muffle of leaves. Hardly any branches brushed than those that still clawed for me.
Two sets of rapid vampire feet halted near the one holding me. “It’s clear,” they said.
“Goot.” said my captor. She motioned with her other hand hard enough that I sensed her body twist.
The sound of a manually operated garage door sprung from its locks at the command of a squeaky twist on a t-handle. A door before the time of automatic openers.
They guided me toward that trundling door. A gaping maw breathed at me. Deeper cold issued from it than the dropping temperature of the darkening night. The building had been unoccupied and alone for a long time. Winter’s chill still clung to its bones in the middle of the summer in this sheltered wood.
Forgotten.
My shoes touched a strip of unmanaged grass, a step of gravel washed by rain from the eaves, and then cold concrete.
The door trundled back down and latched behind us. The cement floor seemed to suck heat from my body through the soles of my shoes. They guided me forward. Cobwebs brushed my arms and I’m sure the outside of the bag that hung heavy on my head. The creak of soggy iron doors erupted, banging open before me as they led me forward.
My guide stopped, mentioning, “Steps down, bitte.”
I put a foot out and touched only air. I let my foot down and it landed on uneven stone. Old stone with ripples of corroding mortar. I felt sick. They took me down, putting me in the damp and the dark under the ground. Every bit the spirit of an ancient, forgotten crypt.
Cold.
-:- Sixteen -:-
Branoc’s cell phone rang. The display on his phone showed “untraceable”. Normal humans might get “unknown” on their caller ID if a blocked cell phone number attempted reaching them. Vampires had another layer of access controls. Branoc’s phone would actually show the humans’ veiled numbers and start bringing up their personal data on an easily flipped-to page on his display. But not vampires. A shadowy dark and nearly otherworldly communication realm that sometimes even further obscured itself through secrecy. His phone only blinked “untraceable” as the rings continued.
Branoc let his foot off the accelerator. He hit the speaker-phone and answered the call.
“Mr. Branoc?” came a silky smooth woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“I can hear others in your car so I will be brief.”
Branoc glanced in his rear view mirror. Garin sat quietly alert. Brett leaned against the corner of the seat and trim recovering but not fully awake yet, “Ok.”
“We have your girl for a trade.”
“– Trade for what?”
“We will call you later with the specifics. Make sure you contact Garin Ramsburgh. You will need his help in meeting our demands.”
The phone went silent.
-:- Seventeen -:-
“I’m going to vomit,” I stood on the stairs. I had counted sixteen. Like bullets seeking me at each tread. My body wavered. Still a crushing grip on my elbow and likely the only thing keeping me from fainting. The acid already scoured the back of my throat in little uncontrolled gurgles.
Behind the vampire, guiding me down into the ground, came a different voice, “I wouldn’t advise it. You won’t want to mess in your hat – because you’ll be wearing it a lot.”
I took another tentative step to seventeen and what seemed like my doom.
My body stiffened as icy sheets sliced through my nervous system. My mind recognized that voice. The haughty and uncaring viciousness of it: Claire!
-:- Eighteen -:-
“Where do we go?” asked Garin. His hands pulled at both seats as he sat forward and looked at the now blank phone.
Branoc slowed the car and wheeled it off into the dusty parking lot of an abandoned gravel pit. “Wait.”
“You don’t have any fancy tracing equipment to know where that signal came from?”
“Not for vampire dark fiber. You should know that.”
“I do but hoped there might still be something I didn’t know.”
Branoc twisted in his seat to face Garin, “It’s good they want to bargain as we have a chance to figure out where they are at.”
“Other than if they killed her outright.”
“Yes.”
“We shouldn’t have left them in the car,” said Garin, fidgeting with the car’s trim.
“Safe if they listened and stayed hidden.”
“You should have realized they held Anna’s sister and she might do something.”
“As should you. But blame won’t solve the problem since we don’t have a time machine. We have to look at what to do from here into the future. The past is gone. The future, that’s what we vampires live for, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“– Wha … What happened?” Brett whispered. His hands touched his head and ribs. Healing like worms under the skin. Knitting his life back together.
“Garin saved you from the edge of death.” Branoc put his hands on the steering wheel. He looked off into the approaching night as the last of the reflected sunlight dropped below the horizon. “Garin, what might they want with you?”
“I haven’t made any friends with whoever backed Yashar and Sandro.”
“That might be a revenge angle but they are bargaining. They planned a plot certain to lure Anna and likely you.”
“– What …?” stammered Brett. “All this is because of you Garin?” Brett snapped out of the fog.
“Maybe.” Garin glanced at Brett, “We need to focus on Anna.”
“You’re right we do.”
Branoc hit the wheel, “You need to realize it’s about Anna until we learn otherwise. The two of you fighting over her won’t solve anything.” He looked at each of their eyes in the mirror, “You two got that?”
“Yes, Dad,” said Brett. He knew he shouldn’t have said that and glanced out the window.
“Garin, what could be at your plant that they want?”
“I don’t know. But this seems to go back there doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe we should be there when the call comes in for their demands?”
“I thought that.”
“Can your security clearance get us passed the red tape?”
Branoc pressed the accelerator and spun the steering wheel around, “I have a few clearances we could test out, but they will alert too many and risk Anna.” A fan of white gravel and dust billowed out the back of the car as they launched onto the main road. “We’ll need more information from our adversaries.”
-:- Nineteen -:-
They pulled the hood roughly off my head. My hair hung in wet ribbons against my face. The moist perspiration on my forehead icy cold in the damp underground air.
A pale green fluorescent lamp feebly lit a far corner of the basement.
I smelled only ancient withering rot and mold. Rough cut wooden beams above me seemed carefully dusted with a powdery gray mold, hung thick with cobwebs, and dried husks of old spider feasts dangling from their little trash dumps. The cracked and split stone floor showed where water flooded up inches on the wall. Probably every year when the snow melted in the forest or maybe every large thunderstorm. Rotted post stumps supported the house above on pencil point remains from grub infested feasts – warning of an imminent crush at any misplaced weight above. But the posts held with enough sturdy pith behind the softening outer layers.
Old rusty nails pounded in the beams and furring strips on a couple of the walls hung tattered and raggedy coats and p
atched up trousers that looked over a century old. Green brass buttons and powdery reddish-brown iron rivets clamped stiff leather straps together. A single bicycle tire draped over a joist nail deflated with a fibrous looking cracked red rubber inner tube hanging from it and stretched with age. Rotted wires and ropes fallen onto heaps of moldy wooden barrels that long ago spilled their packing straw and moldy sawdust onto the floor. Their once bold iron hoops rusted to less than tinfoil strength. The forgotten place.
They tied me to a sturdy wooden chair facing the steps. A newer metal door with diamond plate patterned steel sheets welded over a timber core and affixed with new hinges and several deadbolts. Not in a row, like the one I might have expected on the swing side, but all four sides of the door. The deadbolts pinned the door at each side so even if the hinges could be removed or damaged the door would remain secure. Caps had been welded over the inside ends of the deadbolts protecting against any lock picking attempts from my side, not that I knew how to do that.
Nor did I see any window casements anywhere around the basement. Thick stone filled mortared walls from floor to ceiling, tight and as sturdy as when built. Fleeting shoes of the other vampires disappeared up the stairs. The one that carried me to this place stood before me holding the hood, “I wanted you to see your new home. Get a good smell.”
I smelled the must and the damp but also a mix of several different women’s perfumes. Cloying now with my nose free of the black bag and able to sort it from the moldy dungeon they put me in.
“Must be better than that old hood. But enough gossip for now.” She plopped the hood back over my head. Fortunately, she did not tie it so I could get fresh air by moving my head back and forth, for what that fresh air might be worth down here. I heard her swing the door shut and the deadbolts snick into place. Alone with the mold and the spiders and the other frightening things but thankfully no vampires.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #1 & #2) Page 29