The assassin’s blades wove dangerously close. Her sword came down and Garin put his sword up to parry and twist away. The assassin moved forward off balance but Garin could not take advantage of it. She turned and spun her sword like a pinwheel. Lunging, parrying, and slicing across Garin. Their blades rattled against each other. Lunge. Parry. Spin. They slammed into each other. Garin found a purchase running up a tree trunk and thrust his sword over the assassin’s completed swing then through her rib cage. He twisted the blade as he pulled it out. She staggered back trying to seal the massive hole shut but blood and air sucked through the wound.
Garin kicked her in the chest knocking her back against a tree. He leaped and blocked her raised sword with his left sword while his right sword sliced clean and straight through the assassin’s neck. The sheared blond tips of her shoulder length locks bloodied as the head and hair fell to the ground.
Garin moved forward. The path lead to a rotting and tumble-down gray shack. Its roof bright green in a massive soggy moss covering. The windows, those that still held upright in crumbling and mossy wooden frames, shimmered with discolored dust and mold.
His shoes touched a strip of knee-length unmanaged grass that ended at a gravel ring around the house washed clear by decades of rain from the eaves. The garage door stood shut with rusty splotches. Maybe it had been painted white in some prior history. The parking lot and driveway leading away from the garage left undisturbed for so long that trees and shrubs filled much of it eager to reclaim forest. Garin didn’t see any movement behind the windows.
A shadow leaped around the corner of the cabin. An assassin brought her sword down smashing into Garin’s shoulder through his shirt and into his collarbone. The metal ground out of his body as his bones gripped the steel. He shifted his stance and willed his remaining muscles to grip her blade. He swung his other sword around shearing off both arms above her elbows. He dropped his sword and gripped her short curly hair pulling her head aside. His fangs clamped her neck and drew her strength in a torrent. He dropped her pale empty husk, slicing his sword across her neck, the pieces tumbling into the grass. He pulled her sword from his shoulder and his bones, nerves, and muscles healed quickly. He gripped his two swords and treaded softly forward.
The T-handle on the garage door twisted slowly from the inside. The catches on the door popped and the door sprung out. Whoever tried opening it halted, trying for silence but the door had given them away.
Garin dropped below the windows of the porch and moved mutely toward the garage. Someone lifted the garage door slowly, nearly imperceptibly, with the restrained power of a vampire. Garin scanned the house and listened for another attacker trying to surround him but everywhere the house seemed silent.
He crouched until he could see two pairs of boots shimmering in the sliver of light dousing the old concrete floor under the gap below the door. Garin leaped at the door from his hidden cove. The ancient steel of his swords sliced from their tips at his extended arms at the outer sides of the expansive door and crossed each other on their way out as his arms carried them around his body in a deathly hug. The rent in the door boiled blood from the two vampire bodies that slapped wetly on the cement behind the door.
Three vampires in jumpsuits streamed from the gaping cold maw of the garage like angry black bats. Garin flipped over onto the widest open space of the old driveway. One fired a pistol at him but he quickly circled the other two vampires putting them between. Their swords flitted in the air at him. The first strikes notched their swords against his. He spun and struck forward expecting the assassin to block his blow so he put power into the swing. He knew doing so would make the strike clumsy and potentially deadly for himself but his sword caught theirs and sheared through it an inch above the cross-guard. The assassin cursed in German and dropped her useless weapon, reaching for a long dagger at her belt. Garin flicked his other sword up and split through the assassin’s chin. Slicing off her lower jaw and fangs. The second sword sought his arm but he blocked, spun, and sliced through the vampire’s thigh. The vampire slumped forward trying to keep righted by hopping. Garin brought his sword around and severed the vampire’s head. He pushed his sword through the body in front of him until his cross-guard punched the body into the air. The body collided with the pistol firing assassin. He sprang to the side to catch the back of her neck with his sword.
A sword brushed near to Garin’s ear as the toothless assassin attacked. The visage on her face a horror of knitting flesh reconstructing itself. He trapped her sword with his own and kicked her. The assassin tumbled back and Garin spun his blades like drums on side loading washing machines carving two big caverns from the center of the vampire that including taking both arms off. He split both swords out in an arc that severed her neck. He sprinted back to the garage where the first two vampires stretched across the concrete reassembling themselves. Their viciousness fading from their eyes with his sword shearing through their necks.
Garin ran across the empty garage. A stack of shelves against the house wall held the vampire’s personal and professional tools. But on a ledge at eye level by itself sat a small wooden trivet, a pair of vampire fangs glinting on it. He halted and scooped up the fangs that, like fingerprints, uniquely identified every vampire. He recognized these as his mother’s, taken when the assassins methodically and brutally murdered her. He dropped the teeth into his pocket, his anger rising as he sprang down the set of crumbly steps into the crypt-cold ground.
-:- Thirty -:-
I heard hushed voices chattering in the garage. Something happening out there beyond the door. I strained my ears but I couldn’t understand anything. Other than what seemed as anger, worry, demands, and orders. Icy silence came quickly. Then a sudden screeching of steel on steel ripped out of the garage beyond my door. A noise so loud it cut through the floor above my head. Quickly followed by vampire shrieks and noises of battle and a rapid pistol firing.
The pins locking the steel door crackled open in haste and Claire entered the basement.
“Shit,” Claire said as she pushed the door closed. The door could not be locked from this side and she had no way to barricade it. Nothing around the basement except crumbling iron and wood. I watched her take a long knife from her belt, wedge it at the top of the door, and shove a second knife at the bottom. She pushed the daggers smoothly until the cross-guards pressed against the metal door and stone wall.
Outside vocal sounds crossed between fighting cats and battling raccoons that physically slammed blows like grizzlies. Swords tapped and rang at such speed that it sounded like raindrops on a metal roof in a torrential downpour, impossible to pick one or another stroke from the onslaught. Claire crossed the room and stood behind me looking at the door. The glint of a sword hung silently near the chair leg. I realized both the grave danger and a hoped for rescue that twined into a single bundle of growing fear.
“Where’s your hood?”
“Someone forgot to put it back on.” It lay on the floor next to me.
“I think you figured how to get your hood off by yourself. But that’s good. He’ll see your eyes when you die.”
I stiffened involuntarily. But I also thrilled at the hope. Someone came to rescue me. Silence from the other side of the door. Then the door shuddered. Vampire strong punches dimpled the steel panel and flexed the portal but the wedges held. A solid boot kick folded the door open. Garin stood in the doorway like a hero painting of old ringed in an ancient picture frame. Smoke, dust, and mold swirled around him like a fog. His torso hard and covered in a blood drenched black t-shirt with the two Katana swords from his bedroom mantle. I wanted him badly in more ways than rescuing me. How did that idea flood my mind? At a time like this? My heart skipped a beat in a moment of joy.
Claire’s sword lifted and crossed inches from my neck, bringing back the fear. “Nice to see you Garin. You look hot. Angry yes, but hot.”
“Step away from Anna,” Garin demanded.
“Now Garin, you must kno
w you can’t have her.”
“You have the agreed upon lab equipment. We met your group’s demands. You need to give Anna back.”
“But now you killed my friends. That’s renegotiating the agreement.”
“You aren’t the lead negotiator.”
“That’s right. I’m only along for the excitement.”
“I never took you for a scientist.”
“I’m not.”
“None of you are scientists.”
“No. Did the lack of white lab coats give us away?”
“Who is the lead negotiator?”
“You killed her.”
“So you’re done with this group then?”
“Done? Unlikely.”
“We’re a mercenary group hired to take the project to the next level. The militia and the terror cells filled an early need for tools. We’re part of phase two and now prepping phase three.”
“Then where are the leaders for this project?”
“That would be fun to know wouldn’t it?”
Garin moved toward them, “Tell me who.”
“Garin, you don’t have a negotiating platform here. I have your girlfriend. We have the equipment successfully delivered.”
“Drop your sword and back away.” Garin demanded.
Claire lifted a foot and kicked the rotting timber holding the basement up. The post easily fractured in its lousy state and fell away in a puffy debris cloud. The wood floor groaned over our heads. Sand, mold, and dead bug carcasses shook down as the joists flexed in a sudden loss of support. The joists splintered and folded.
Garin rushed a pair of paces forward and held the joists on top of his fists clenched around his sword grips.
“You make quite a good post,” Claire purred, “that’s what I liked about you.” Claire grabbed the rope that tied my waist against the back of the chair and dragged me deeper into the basement. “Did Garin tell you we have a history?”
“Claire, you don’t need to tell that.”
“I think Anna should know. Way before you Anna, I was Garin’s first. And his fifth. And his tenth. Garin has always come back to me after failing with other girls.”
“– Claire!” The floor shrugged off more debris.
Claire leaned down, keeping her eyes locked on Garin, to whisper in my ear, “I was his first and his rebound girl. How do you think we so quickly came together after you broke your relationship with him?”
I hadn’t considered any of that. “He could do what he wanted.”
“Brave little girl,” Claire said. I saw her sword tip rise and fall in little wavers. Not the icy rigid strength of a vampire that could hold such a thing perfectly unmoving for days. She seemed scared! Or maybe she held Garin in her feelings as strongly as I? Had Claire become wrapped in him? Or still lying and manipulating? But I knew she used me as her pawn – and I could be quickly expendable – more fear clawed at my brain. She dragged my chair further into the basement. Garin followed moving first one fist and then the second along the joists while holding the floor up. The flexing as he moved forward put tremors through the flooring and other joists. Trash rained down as the wood considered cracking and falling in additional places. Claire lowered the sword and tightened her arm around the rope as well as the chair.
“Good bye Garin.” Claire leaped directly upwards. Her fist parted the rotting floors and walls then up through the mossy roof. We floated above the house as our upward arc slowed. Then we fell. Claire landed next to the house after flipping me above her head like catching me in a chair from a circus spring board. I couldn’t get my breath before Claire ran into the woods.
Garin blasted through the house and landed near the garage. Claire moved into the shadows and sliced through the bonds that held me to my chair. She deftly sheathed her sword as she ran with me savagely squeezed under her arm like a rag doll jumping forward over rocks and fallen trees deeper into the wood. The forest blotted my blurry view. Frighteningly fast movement into the forest punctuated with furious spitting guttural growls cast by an angry hunted animal.
-:- Thirty-One -:-
The buzz of a bullet flitted through the underbrush followed closely by the sound of the charge from a pistol among the trees. Another chunk of lead spinning like a football burst through the air inches from me. So close, I saw its line strike through a sapling and spiral into the shaggy bark of a hickory tree. The bark crackled like thick dry paper. Maybe I became used to Claire’s rapid pace. Maybe I dreamed. A second shot buzzed like an infuriated hornet but stopped wetly near me. The bullet burrowed into Claire’s shoulder of her arm holding me. Her grip lessened for a heartbeat but she hoisted me back up and lengthened her stride. A rivulet of blood coursed down the muscles wrapping under her shoulder blade, soaking the black jumpsuit. Most likely my blood escaping her undead flesh. The hole healed and expunged the mushroomed slug. Alerted, or maybe caring more now, Claire seemed to hear the approaching bullets and moved enough so any shots kept missing her. The bullets did not come from behind where Garin raced to catch us.
Light filtered sparsely through the forest canopy in splashes of amber-greens bursting across patches of small struggling saplings or wide swaths of Northern ferns. Obliquely I saw something moving toward us, a flash of light and shadow through the pooling light let through by the tree branches. The attack line aimed somewhere ahead of Claire but narrowed the distance between us. Claire changed her track and dove into a ravine. Tree trunks flanked the depression filled with sharp edged boulders shattered from a fall at great height as if they rode the mile high glaciers that covered this part of the country and fell here in one dramatic splintering plunge when the glaciers receded. Claire zigzagged between and over the jagged rocks. She swung my head, arms, or legs out dangerously avoiding slicing me against their notched saber edges. Buzzing bullets warbled about the air yet continued missing us.
Where did Claire run? She must know she cannot escape two other vampires. But if she can escape long enough to rendezvous with others from her group then the situation changes. I saw the shadow flit from the side. It stayed along the top of the ravine and followed parallel to Claire’s course. I closed my eyes to freeze the image allowing my mind to catch up to the speed. I recognized Branoc with something on his back. I tried again and saw Brett! He lived!
But how long would I live? I ached from the rough pace of Claire’s handling. I knew I needed to do something to survive. Before she engaged other vampires friendly to her. But it seemed she ran in excess of seventy miles an hour. Reaching to grab a tree branch could shred my hands or break my arms.
The pistol shots ended suspiciously as if Branoc’s gun had emptied.
My bouncing head in this wind made it hard to focus. The empty Katana scabbard slapped at Claire’s side. She held her Katana in her free hand. The matching Wakizashi sword grip hung deliciously within reach. How could I grab it? I would have to draw the blade. Did I have the arm length, clutched as I was like a carrion prize, to draw it fully from its sheath? Would I be fast enough to get it out before she slapped me with her fist or her sword? She still hung onto that sword so the blade dripped down and back from her hand. Good for punching and not being hung up in the underbrush as she ran, yet still give a shield if attacked by another sword.
What would I do with the sword when I had it? I couldn’t reach her neck. Freeing my body from her arm would be the best but my body hung over the edges of anything I’d want to slice and I’d as much kill myself getting to her. That only left the two pumping legs below me. A blur of black tights. Like pushing a stick into whirring machine gears. Potentially explosive. Assured unpredictability. If I failed, she wouldn’t hesitate in killing me. Her escape would be easier without me and my death provided easy vengeance on Garin. If I did free myself then this reckless velocity would be like being flung from a speeding Buick. Among trees. And rocks.
But if Claire reached more of her group then both Garin and Brett would perish besides me.
Could I do it?
>
Could I do it fast enough?
Could I live, or die, with the consequences?
The ravine lifted up and the rocks ended. Here the trees stood farther apart with much stouter trunks – a swath of forest that missed the last forest fires or logging operations. Fewer saplings or other vegetation littered their feet. Claire’s stride increased and we accelerated. She swerved around the trunks putting barriers between her and Branoc and Garin who I guessed – I hoped – still ran somewhere near. I couldn’t see them from my position under Claire’s arm to know how close or far they followed and grasped at faith. My breathing rate increased. I bent myself and pulled with both hands at the Wakizashi handle. I used my weight and the wind force to draw the blade down and dip it between those meshing knees and pumping legs. I held it firm but the legs ran hard. The edge cut across the back of one knee. The other knee hit the dull rear edge of the blade kicking my hands free. The strip of steel spun on its own. Circling the cut leg further and flying out sideways, lost under the dead leaves.
Claire fell.
I tumbled, flipped, and spun through the underbrush rolling up the rough roots of an ancient choke cherry tree forcibly gripping the world. My back slammed hard into the trunk and I lost my breath. I slid down as hazy gauze draped across my vision. I couldn’t breathe. The harsh tree roots spilled me on the ground. My head faced Claire’s crash path and my eyes remained opened registering the images but nothing in my mind could process anything. I could not move. I lay still as if bolted to the forest floor by rude wrenches.
Claire recovered from her bowling roll that scored the woods like a plane crash. She reached out and clawed at the wood of a tree to stop herself. She sheathed her Katana to free her other hand and scrambled up the tree. Her mostly severed lower leg dangled loosely, held by a ribbon of bloody flesh and cartilage still strung to her knee. It wiggled like the quick break of a fishing lure as she climbed the tree. Claire stopped at a dizzying height. She hung by one hand and gripped the sword in another to let her knee recover.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3) Page 16