Cara Mia

by Denise Verrico

  Joe nodded.

  “Mia, my love?” Kurt handed the other rifle to Mia, who shouldered it, peering through the sight. Kurt caught Joe’s amazed expression. “She’s an expert marksman. She never told you? She’s deadlier than you know. It seems you have some secrets, Liebchen.” Kurt took the pistol, and grabbed extra boxes of ammunition stuffing them into the pockets of his suede jacket and the rest into Mia’s battered black leather one. “Aim for the head or heart, Doctor. Is he armed?”

  “Probably disarmed the guards.”

  Kurt looked around, his face tense. “Any other way out of the building from this level?”

  “A freight elevator to the loading dock.”

  “We’ll need a vehicle covered from the sun, like a van or truck.”

  “The company van, I’ve used it to move equipment. The keys are in Lydia’s office.”

  Kurt nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They ran to Lydia’s office where Kurt kicked in the door. Joe went to the key safe and rifled through the keys. “Shit—not here. Lydia must have them.”

  Mia spoke up, “I can hot wire a car.”

  Joe and Kurt both looked at her in disbelief.

  “Ethan taught me.”

  Kurt smiled. “You’re an amazing woman.”

  Joe led them through a set of double doors into a storage room where lab equipment and office supplies were stacked on shelves and pallets. The three of them stepped into the freight elevator. Joe closed the gate and the elevator lurched into operation.

  “Christ, this thing is noisy,” said Mia.

  “Be ready to fire,” warned Kurt.

  They raised weapons in anticipation of attack as the elevator opened into another storage area with swinging doors leading out onto the loading dock. They stepped cautiously outside the elevator. Kurt tilted his head, listening. “Can’t hear him,” he whispered. “Mia?”

  She shook her head.

  Joe pointed with the rifle. “There’s the van.”

  Kurt nodded. “I’ll cover this door. You go with Mia.”

  Kurt leaned against the swinging door, training his gun on the doors leading back into the building. Joe covered Mia as she broke the window to open the van door. She crouched down and went to work on the wires, cursing under her breath.

  Air swirled down from the huge cooling duct overhead. The smallest of scrapes against metal made Kurt cock his head to the side. “Scheisse—something’s up there.”

  Suddenly, a dark shape swooped down, dragging Kurt up into the duct above their heads. The pistol clattered to the floor and the bag containing his laptop dropped beside it.

  Joe ran to retrieve the gun. “He’s got Kurt!”

  Mia was by his side in an instant. “Where’s this lead? He won’t kill him. Gaius needs us alive to get those discs back.”

  “It goes all through the building…he might have taken him to the cafeteria, where the bomb is.”

  “Come on!”

  They ran inside toward the atrium with weapons poised. Joe panted to keep up with Mia, as she easily outran him to the cafeteria to look inside. “Not here!”

  Something scuttled above their head towards the atrium. “They’re still in the ductwork,” Mia whispered. They moved cautiously. Joe looked around, but didn’t see anything. Then a drop of blood hit the floor at their feet. Mia growled, raising her weapon above their heads. “Put him down, you bastard!”

  A refined, slightly accented voice called down, “I’ll drop him if you shoot. His brains will spatter over the floor.”

  Mia’s face went still, “It can’t be…Brovik?”

  Joe’s eyes followed up to the steel armature supporting the glass ziggurat atop the atrium. A vampire, his face seared like melting wax, with long, pale hair, clutched Kurt to him in a death grip.

  “I thought he was dead.”

  Brovik laughed. “A few hours of sunlight can’t kill one as old as me, Doctor Ansari. Yes, I know all about you. Very clever of the Amazon to put you to work on Mia, did you learn all of her intimate secrets?”

  “The body on the boat?” Mia gasped.

  “That was one of my dogs you set adrift and burnt with Ethan. Kurt dearest, I was touched at the poetic gesture, but even you, my love, knew nothing about the air raid shelter I’d dug on the island before the war. Give me what I want, and I’ll let you fend for yourselves as long as you can against The Wolf. Try anything Mia, and I’ll kill the boy. Now, where are those discs, cara mia?”

  Mia raised the rifle to her shoulder, taking aim.

  Joe grabbed her arm. “He’ll kill him!”

  “Fucking liar will kill him anyway.” Mia squeezed the trigger. “Sorry about the discs Brovik, but here’s a little something from Sanjivani!”

  Brovik roared as Mia fired. His head exploded in a spray of tissue and blood. The elder’s hands clung to Kurt for an instant before his corpse tottered and fell. With a desperate movement, Kurt wrenched free, catching the supporting structure, and hanging there as Brovik’s body plummeted ten stories to the terrazzo floor. The impact sounded like a melon splitting open. A vast pool of blood spread from the mangled body as burst guts spilled out onto the floor. Joe couldn’t look away, wondering what one thousand year old entrails would look like, but to his surprise they looked like any other.

  “This body should be autopsied,” Joe mused.

  “No time! We don’t know how soon that bomb will go off. Kurt, let’s go!”

  Kurt climbed down the armature, an agile spider monkey, leaping lightly to the floor, his face covered in blood and brain matter.

  “Yuck,” said Mia. A distant rumble shook the building. “Run!”

  The three of them took off through the lobby and down the hall to the rear of the building. Mia and Kurt sped by Joe as if he stood still, a blur. Kurt opened the door onto the loading dock, scooping up his dropped laptop as Mia ran to the van, starting it up. Panting, Joe caught up with them and threw his bag in the back as he slipped into the driver’s seat. Kurt and Mia, not even winded, piled in the back, sitting on a pile of moving mats.

  “What’s this?” Kurt asked, examining Joe’s bag.

  “My research and other data I was given, notes of my sessions with Mia and a first aid kit. There are alcohol wipes in it. Clean yourself up. You look disgusting.”

  Kurt smiled through the gore. “You’re all right, Doctor.”

  Joe released the brake, hitting the gas. Just as the van screeched away from the building a huge explosion rocked them, fire and smoke poured out behind. Joe floored the ignition, clearing the building just as the side collapsed in a cloud of thick dust and debris. Another explosion went off and another until the entire building caved in. Brovik had imploded a tomb for himself and the dead guards. Joe sped out of the parking lot, crashing through the gate, noticing no guard posted there. “Brovik must have killed the guards here too.”

  “Where you taking us?” Mia asked.

  “Maryland. My friend Carol works for the NIH. She has some powerful friends. If they can’t protect you, no one can.”

  Kurt protested. “Gaius has government people in his pay!”

  “It’s our only chance. Leisha was going to move you, but after what Brovik did there isn’t any more Genpath, the project is dead.”

  Kurt leaned over the seat. “Doctor, take us to Virginia, to Ethan’s house. We’ll hide there until you can speak with your friend. It belongs to Mia now. We need to fetch something. There’s nothing in that locker in New York but a letter saying we’re through with Leisha. I suspected something like this might occur and we planted it there before we came here. We were planning to escape—with your help of course. The discs are at Caithness.”

  “Won’t she’ll figure where you are?”

  “She’s never been there,” Mia said. “But we’ll have to be careful. The Wolf might be watching the house.“

  Joe looked over the dash to the lightening sky. “Sun’s starting to rise, better take cover.”

  Kurt sprea
d out the moving pads to make a bed. Mia leaned over the seat “You must be exhausted.”

  “Soon as it gets dark we’ll head to an airport. I’ll call Carol to warn her.”

  Kurt peered over the seat. “Joe, we appreciate the great risk you’re taking.”

  “You never called me anything but Doctor before. Why the sudden familiarity?”

  “We’re partners now, whether you want it or not.”

  “Shit, got to call my wife. She’ll think I’m dead.” Joe pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial. He spoke rapidly to Rima, his voice tense, telling her there was an explosion but he was safe. He had to go to Washington for a while, but not to tell anyone where he was. He couldn’t tell her more, but he’d be in touch.

  Joe glanced back. The two vampires huddled together on the pile of moving pads, like a couple of kids, their fate in his hands. He turned his eyes to the road ahead. The sun bled red over the horizon. Bad weather ahead. Joe turned the van up the ramp onto the interstate, heading east into the storm.

  * * * *

  BLURB FOR TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

  BOOK TWO OF THE IMMORTYL REVOLUTION:

  Narrowly escaping the implosion of Genpath Laboratories, vampire lovers, Mia Disantini and Kurt Eisen are on the run from their rival in the “Forbidden Science”, Immortyl elder Gaius Lupus. When Kurt is captured by Gaius and rescued with the aid of feral child and teen vampires known as sewer rats, Mia witnesses first hand the charismatic spell her lover casts over these would-be revolutionaries who vow to join Kurt in his mission to bring down the house of Gaius. Meeting obstacles to government funding to support the research that will one day allow them to walk in the sun, Kurt builds his forces, while Mia navigates the minefield of rat politics, where she is distressed to be shunted into the background and viewed merely as an overly ambitious concubine who stands between the beloved “Loki” and his followers, particularly the oddly timid, but beautiful Arturo who threatens to sever the deep bond between Mia and Kurt.

  Will Kurt and Mia defeat Gaius’s brutal attacks and realize their dream of a cure for their condition? Will the new order they establish survive betrayal from within? And will their love adapt to the challenge of a third partner?

  * * * *

  EXCERPT FROM TWILIGHT OF THE GODS:

  Kurt grabbed Rob by the shirtfront. “Were you followed?”

  The boy jerked away. “Don’t think so.”

  I scanned the area for scents and sounds, gripping my weapon tightly. Nothing. “No one here, take a breath Rob.” I lowered the rifle.

  Rob took note of our guns. “Jesus, you two are serious about this.”

  Kurt’s ire rose. “Idiot! You could have led them right to us!”

  “I sent them the other way, half-pint.”

  A low growl rumbled from Kurt’s chest. A car pulled up to the gate at the end of the drive. Doors opened and shut. Muffled voices floated through the air toward us. An unmistakable scent filled the air.

  Hairs on the back of my neck rose. “Kurt…”

  Kurt’s brows met in the middle. “I smell them.”

  Kurt grabbed my hand and I yanked Rob back into the trees with us.

  “Rob, get down!” I whispered, raising my weapon. The three of us crouched down in the long grass. Crickets shrieked. Mosquitoes and chiggers pounced and burrowed into my arms and legs. I wanted to squirm but didn’t dare. A ways off, two more cars screeched up and their doors opened and shut. Shit.

  Two Immortyl men in sleek suits vaulted over the gate of the stone fence, one huge, one not so big, but way bigger than Kurt or me. Gaius’s dogs. They crept up the long drive, handguns leading. I trained my weapon on them.

  The big one said to his shorter companion, “Remember, just slow them down. The Wolf wants them alive.”

  ABOUT AUTHOR DENISE VERRICO

  Denise Verrico is a New Jersey native who grew up in Western Pennsylvania. She attended Point Park College in Pittsburgh, where she majored in theatre arts. For seven seasons she was a member of The Oberon Theatre Ensemble in NYC with whom she acted, directed, designed and wrote plays. Cara Mia, Book One of the Immortyl Revolution is her first novel. Denise has enjoyed vampire stories from the time she was a little girl and a fan of the Dark Shadows television series. She enjoys non-fiction and fiction of all kinds, particularly historical fiction, thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy and most recently manga and graphic novels. She currently lives in Ohio with her husband, teenaged son and flock of seven parrots.

  Visit her website at www.deniseverricowriter.webs.com