Two flashes whipped passed me. They didn’t see me since I lay behind the roots and I couldn’t call to them. My heart clenched hard in my chest. The pulse pushed. My skin and body expanded slightly from that pump. Then a second ragged beat squeezed forth in some kind of life but I still couldn’t move.
Branoc dropped Brett to the ground. Garin leaped higher than I had ever remembered but Claire remained above his reach. Branoc tried as well but neither could reach Claire. She growled. It reminded me of how a cousin’s hunting dogs worried a raccoon in a tree. Our flashlights cut across the dusk revealing glowing angry raccoon eyes.
Claire healed rapidly. My blood must be strong. For her.
Brett looked around. His eyes searched the ferns, rotting fallen branches, and sprawling leaves. “Anna!” Then he saw me. He ran back, “Anna, are you alright?”
I moaned. Breathing came in short painful gasps.
Garin growled, “Claire, come down. We can talk.”
“Oh, I’ll be down shortly.” She said, shortly holding her sword in one hand. She shifted around so her good knee bent putting her foot solidly flat against the tree trunk. Her hand held the tree behind her back. Like I remembered practicing the crab walk in elementary gym class but with a weapon that would have never passed the school’s no tolerance policy.
“Anna,” Brett touched me and lifted at my body. But as rapidly, he let me go, “dammit, I shouldn’t have moved you.” He looked about my body and then ran his hands from my scalp to my shoulders and arms and my thighs to my feet. I winced in several places as his fingers touched me carefully. His hands probed those areas more thoroughly. “Bruises. Nasty bruises but nothing broken on your arms or legs.” He came back to my neck and touched carefully along it to my collar bone and then the front and sides of my chest. I screamed when he touched my ribs. They seemed like door hinges and pressed against my heart. Pain came sharply with each breath deeper than a shallow pant. “Shit!” Brett lifted my shirt and touched my quivering abdomen. His focus remained intense searching for why my skin looked more yellowed here. I moaned in shooting pain and convulsed which only hinged my ribs again like squeezing a basket made of dry twigs.
“Garin! Anna’s injured!”
Claire’s voice came clear with wickedness, “Yes Garin, you better go tend to the girl. I can see from here she’s bleeding internally. I’ll even give you a few moments of truce to say goodbye to her.”
Branoc growled, “Claire! –”
Claire shrugged, “Her own doing.”
Garin’s fists flexed open and closed. His boots trampled the leaves as his head moved back and forth between Claire and me in mental anguish that pulled at the balance between rescue and revenge. His movements revealed he knew he could have one or the other but not both.
“Keep an eye on Claire,” Garin needlessly ordered Branoc. He shoved Brett back and knelt heavily at my side. He bit his fangs into his wrist and brought his blood over to drip across my lips and drizzle onto my tongue. Ripping and shredding bark rent the forest silence.
Branoc warned, “Garin!”
Brett’s face went slack. He struggled to kick his feet and push with his hands to move away. At the last moment, his eyes still riveted to the air, his fingers found my ankle and he dragged me back away from Garin and the coming shadow. Claire’s body rocketed at Garin like a missile. Her Katana held crosswise splitting the wind. Her face twisted up tight into a free flowing shock of hair and fangs. Coal-like points burned from her eyes followed by a dire swooping body. Garin jumped away into the air flipping and drawing his swords.
Claire’s fists hit the leaf blanketed forest floor and she rolled forward finishing with an acrobatic flourish that spun up vertically consuming the remaining motion and landed her solidly on her feet, “Russian Ballet.”
“Long?” Garin snarled.
“Half a century taught me about being limber.”
“I’m sure it did.”
They flashed together and their swords rang with the speed of steel castanets. Branoc joined them with his sword. Claire beat back both Garin and Branoc with such speed neither Brett nor I could watch what happened inside that blurring ball. The dried leaves spun into the air around their writhing motions. Saplings bent toward their tempest. A tornado twisting with four foot steel scalpels.
“Are you getting better?” Brett asked, his eyes riveted to the flashing swords.
I pushed my hands on the leaves. Amazed I had control again. And sat partially up, “I – I think so.” I touched my stomach and the pain continued receding while its awful tint changed colors in the light filtering between the tree leaves from high above. Old trees that cared not for the battle spinning around their ancient feet holding the ground so tight they soared into a canopy seventy feet above. I thought and sucked air abruptly. These trees could be two hundred or maybe the largest three hundred. Claire almost doubled their age. She reached back before Shakespeare penned Romeo and Juliet when the Capulets and everyone else openly carried and fought with swords. She must have seen Shakespeare’s productions while he personally observed and edited the performances. A shiver ran up my spine but it could be the vampire blood. I hugged Brett, his body warm and comforting.
His arms encircled me and he whispered into my ear, “Let’s go while they are distracted.” I nodded. He pulled me to my feet. His dark green eyes searched mine. I tested my legs and they became stronger and surer. We slipped around the black trunk that had so harshly caught my body. I stared at the gnarled bumps, angular roots, and the splashes of disturbed scales where my body had rubbed against it. Like gawking at a car crash on the freeway. Brett’s hand slid down my arm, latched onto my hand, and pulled me away from the tree and the vampires. We couldn’t add to the fight but this we could do. We could run away but we also knew the awful reality we could never get far enough. The sounds of the vampires receded into the noisy chipmunks and birds announcing our passage. The sun filtered through the imperfect dusk below the tree tops.
Brett looked over his shoulder and asked as he pulled me forward, “Think you can run?” I nodded and we picked up our pace into a slight jog. “Keep ahead of me and run as fast as you can. I’ll watch for them as we run.”
“Which way?”
“Straight ahead unless you see something we can’t cross.”
I ran. My heart labored as I expected but still a little lighter and faster with less fatigue as I considered it. The remnants of vampire blood still flowed through my body. Like the burst of energy from a caffeine high. I focused on putting my feet ahead of each other and flying through the forest as fast as our human legs could take us. The ground dipped and cattails and witch-hazel shrubs appeared in the bright sunlight. Ghostly white tree trunks stood in the clearing ahead with a haze of flying insects hovering through it all. Dense with life at the opening in the forest.
“Swamp, go left.” Brett said to me.
We stayed under the old trees and skirted the swamp.
“Ok, keep going straight.”
“How do you know where we’re going?” I panted.
“I watch the sun and figure out the compass points. My father taught me.”
Too bad my father did not teach me such things. I would already be going in circles. “Sure.”
“Can you keep running?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep going.”
The tree trunks became narrower and younger. They crowded together in protest against the ancient trees we left behind. The closer spacing between the trees and the increasing underbrush slowed our pace. White papery birch trees interspersed with shocks of bushy maple trees. We came to a meadow. “Go across the field,” Brett said.
I saw Brett remained at the edge of the meadow. I slowed my stride, waiting, yet he waved me forward to keep going. He manipulated a pair of dead samplings. He caught up to me still snapping off branches.
“Hold a minute.” He put his shoe on first one end of the trees and broke the tops and then the bottoms leavi
ng a straight six foot section. He took a folding hunting knife from his belt and whittled at the ends of the two sticks. “Won’t score any points for beauty in any Olympic javelin throw contest but they’ll be better than nothing. Go.”
I ran. Brett gripped the two spears in one hand as he clipped his knife back on his belt and kept up. The meadow ended against a small creek. A row of broken and trashy weeping willows loitered along its banks. The other side of the creek showed a snarled and shadowed forest stretching away into brambles and vines and possibly swampy enough to swallow us.
“I don’t think we can run through there.”
“We could follow the creek.”
“Maybe but it’s not deep enough to hide our tracks nor large enough to float down.”
“So what do we do?”
“Let’s hide among these willows. This field gives us a chance to see if we’re followed.” Brett approached the willows and found a straight path into the clump that gave a good area of concealment. “Here, hide in this hollow.”
“What are you doing?”
“Laying down these spears.” He rested the buts of them against tree roots digging a little trench like sockets in the dirt. The tips he laid down pointing toward the field. Several fistfuls of the dart-like willow leaves mostly covered the sharp tips and the less natural looking parts of the long shafts. “There,” he brushed away the leaves where he intended to grip the spears, “If she attacks us I can raise these like this,” his fists lifted as if he held the spears, “And then she impales herself on them.”
“I think Garin will kill her.”
“Are you sure?”
“He has to.”
“He’s good with a sword but she’s had hundreds of years of practice.”
“Branoc looked good with a sword.”
“I took fencing lessons for a while,” Brett scooted me behind our little spot, “Branoc uses a Katana like he learned on a broadsword or a soldier’s falchion. Claire … she uses hers as a real samurai but with the distracting habits of a sixteenth century rapier-using street fighter.”
My body tingled in that way. I liked men who talked with knowledge and something to do with running off the constant fear in a moment of tranquility. How did I even get that feeling if expecting more danger? I sat on a chunk of broken limb wedged between the tree trunks. I brushed off a piece of dead and dried wood, a husk of life, and it had barely any weight. I broke it between my fingers. Brett sat next to me so he could see around the edge of the tree trunk and across the meadow. I could smell him, not some fancy deodorant or hair gel product. Him. A slice of animal odor but also something else. His voice seemed to drop in timbre and he said, “You know I love you Anna.”
“Do we want to talk about this now?” Our survival remained so unsure.
“Yes. If something happens, I want you to know. If nothing happens, I want you to know.”
“You know I’m still not over Garin.” Even though I more than ever wanted freedom from vampires. Everything from my capture through imprisonment flooded into my veins. A cocktail of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and dread burst forth from every corner of my soul. I pushed it away and focused on Brett’s emerald eyes.
“I know.”
“I like you a lot. But I’m not sure now is a good time to talk about this.” I also guessed if I ever wanted a real family that it meant avoiding vampires. I needed a real human partner. Vampires reproduced through death and destruction. Made not born. I touched Brett’s chin and leaned toward him to kiss. My body flipped more emotional chemicals into my veins and these warmed my core. Brett wrapped his arms around my back pressing me to him hard. But he broke away.
“I need to watch for them.” He glanced at the meadow and back to me, “I’d love to pursue that kiss more.”
“I do too but I shouldn’t have.” I looked across the meadow, “I should have waited for later.”
“Don’t think anything about me pulling away –”
“– I don’t. Later is good –”
Brett stiffened. His arm reached out to touch my shoulder, his head nodded. I looked between two twiggy clumps of brambles that wavered in the pale breeze across the meadow.
Claire!
She hobbled into the meadow searching the grasses and flowers and sniffed the air like a hound. The light caught her face and it dripped blood from profound cuts. Her hair hung in ragged strands, some revealing slices that lined up with those on her head. A deep cut through her collar bone into her chest winked in light and one arm had been chopped away. The other looked like it had been stuck back on to heal and remained nonfunctional with a split up her hand between her middle and ring finger that went somewhere up her forearm. These strips flapped together like ghastly streamers and dripped blackish red blood. Chunks of flesh and jumpsuit fell away leaving gaping red caverns in her thighs and calves. She stumbled forward with the rough gait of a zombie horde but just as relentlessly unstoppable. She followed our path with determination on her face. She needed to feed to heal rapidly. That determination and hatred goaded her forward in her hunt for us.
I leaned to Brett’s ear and whispered, “She has to run for us to use those spears doesn’t she?”
Brett nodded.
“Get ready with the stakes.” I knew if I told Brett what I planned, he would have resisted. But I knew I had to do it. I rose from the tree limb and rushed out from under the weeping shadows of the willow so I appeared clearly in the light, and screamed, “No!”
Claire’s head snapped up at the sound of my voice. A snarl-like grin pulled back from her fangs and the shaky zombie hobble transformed into a fast sprint revealing deceptive strength. I shuffled back under the shade. My body blocked her sight of Brett who gripped the two spears against the ground. Fear and doubt arose in my body. The leaves covering the tips of the spears rustled near my feet as Brett’s fears climbed upon his arms. Claire neared fast.
The creature’s single eye flashed anger and rage, the other eye obliterated in a mess of cuts across her face and nose. I dared not flinch in front of this encroaching monster. She sprang at me with her fangs reaching for my neck.
I stepped back recoiling from sudden overwhelming fear and out of control. I fell over Brett’s shoulders as he ducked his head and I rolled backward falling flat on my stomach in the damp dirt and crunchy dry leaves. I raised my head. Brett held the spears piercing the vampire’s chest. Branch spurs Brett missed trimming held hard against the creature’s ribs but she forced the spears through her body reaching hissing and snapping rage-filled fangs toward Brett. Her split hand wiggled, regaining control and possibly strength to capture them at any moment.
I pushed up to my knees and snatched at Brett’s belt knife. I opened the folding blade until its lock clicked smoothly and solidly into place. I gripped the sharp metal handle glancing along the black anodized blade. A part of me prayed that hiding under that fancy paint was forged something equivalent to a Damascus water lattice. Its edge gleamed in sharp ground steel as I cut the blade across the vampire’s neck. Black blood boiled out of the beast but I knew I wasn’t free yet. She howled in gurgling fits that sprayed me with a mist of blood. I brought the knife back around switching my grip so I put the knife blade behind the vampire’s neck and pulled toward me while grabbing a shock of her hair with my other hand. The knife slipped between vertebrae much like cutting cartilage from the bones of a chicken thigh to toss on the grill. The tug of gristle, the scrape of bone, and strength I didn’t know I had borne of fear, hate, and revenge.
This vampire would haunt me no more.
-:- Thirty-Two -:-
I knelt at the edge of the creek and splashed water to clear my face from the dripping blood burning my eyes. “We need to find Branoc and Garin.”
Brett sluiced his knife in the water and folded it up, “Then let’s go. They can get us out of the forest faster …”
If Garin and Branoc still lived.
We ran back along our trail to search for them.
We found Branoc motionless and across a log empty of blood where Claire had been anxious to chase us to feed or didn’t see that she had not really killed him. His sword stuck in the earth when it fell from his nearly dead fingers.
“I’ve got him.” Brett took his arm and stabbed into Branoc’s teeth. The blood revived him and he pushed Brett away. “I want more but I’ll be ok. Save it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We need to find Garin,” Branoc winced as he stood. He bent down to pick up his sword and wheezed like a ninety year old. “I’ll catch up to you.”
I ran and Brett followed close behind. Plenty of violence across the forest showed us the way. Broken saplings, sword cuts high and low on branches, and blade strikes against rocks that still smelled of brimstone and matches, and shredded tree trunks as deeply gouged as bear claw marks. Ravaged by ferocious vampires in a death struggle.
Ahead a pair of pale elms twisted and bent searching for light from under the weight of the taller red oaks. Under their branches lay the bloody chunk of Garin’s body. Ragged leaves, dirt, and flattened underbrush surrounded the wreckage as the gory tornado spun out. I stumbled over rocks getting to Garin's side. I swung my wrist into his open fangs. “Brett, find his arms and legs.” Brett gave me an arm and I pressed it in place. His other shoulder came next and three chunks of that arm and his hand. Joining his macabre puzzle pieces, I pressed the patchwork together while my blood ran into his throat. I hoped we didn’t need all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men. Brett pushed his foot on as stiffly as buckling a shoe on a manikin and seated Garin’s thigh that looked like a purchased ham shank with the meat surrounding the white shaft of bone in the center.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3) Page 17