Brett watched in horror as Garin’s body knitted together. Sinew and muscle lacing at each other to grip and pull tight. Fibers of skin twitching and closing seams. The power of my live blood coursed into him and gave him the energy to stitch himself whole. I pulled my arm away from his mouth. His lips mouthed silently for more. I stood and backed away. My mind faint from the loss of blood, I had given too much. I tipped over. Brett leaned forward and caught me in his warm arms.
Garin rolled to his side, not strong enough to sit yet. He glowered, “Where’s Branoc? Did he kill Claire?”
“No Brett and I did. He’s coming.” A wash of emotion flashed through me – such awfulness from Claire – I’m surer I don’t want anything to do with Garin again. Brett comforted me here in his arms after having stood with me against Claire.
Branoc stepped into view with a crackle of twigs under his boot. “Garin, who is your Uncle Tremper?”
“My mother’s brother.”
“Here,” Branoc tossed an object to Garin.
Garin caught it, wincing as some features of his body still recovered, “My phone. You brought it here? They could track us.”
“I had more strength at the time and thought we could risk it. There is a text message important for you to see.”
Garin flipped the phone on and read the text. After a moment, he shut the phone off and pulled its battery. “My uncle found your sister and her kids. He’s at my house waiting for us.”
My fainting evaporated. Hope, like smelling salts, forced me awake, “My sister?”
Branoc asked, “Think it’s a trick?”
“Possible. I haven’t seen him in a while and he’s found Anna’s sister dispatching more of these jumpsuit assassins? How did he know what is going on?”
“The text came from inside your company.”
“I want to get my sister and nieces and nephews.”
Brett said, “I think we can risk going there. Anna is pretty dangerous.” I glared at him so he shrugged, “I sometimes make bad jokes when I’m nervous.”
Branoc said, “We should move anyway. That phone spike could be tracked and they’ll be here soon if we didn’t get the main hive. We need more information on them anyway.”
The sky’s cold steel-gray light faded quickly to black rushing before a frigid, damp, gusting wind portending rain.
Branoc’s car came to life.
Garin asked, “How did you find us?”
Branoc said, “Brett suggested we check your laptop but we found it password protected. Then we guessed your computer password might be ‘Anna’ and it thankfully worked.”
Garin said, “I slammed a fresh install on there to make sure nothing funny got placed by our jumpsuit assassins but I used a basic temporary password.”
“Glad that’s what you did.”
I pulled the car door closed and asked Branoc, “Do you think we killed the leaders of this mess?”
He flipped the headlight switch illuminating the shadowy world around us and glanced at me with those gray vampire eyes of his. He spun the steering wheel around and his eyes swept back to the road. The engine roared and the acceleration forced me hard into the seat. I think I had my answer.
Other questions stayed silent as the car flung us through the darkness. Will my sister be unharmed? Or is it an ambush? And if there’s a chance this is over, what of the relationships between Brett and Garin and I? They sat uneasily at opposite ends of the back seat staring out their own windows into the blurring darkness. I owned that particular answer and yet my heart remained mute.
What was I going to do?
-:- The End -:-
BEHOLD THIS NIGHT
The Vampires of Livix Novel – Volume 3
Paranormal Romantic Suspense
-:- Zero -:-
A CHILL WIND BUFFETED the guard tower overlooking the prison yard. Arnie shrugged his windbreaker tighter across his shoulders and turned away from the blast of air. The sun shown sharp and bright throwing crisp shadows. He didn’t like to stand behind the mirrored glass of the tower when they let the prisoners out for their daily exercise. It’s good to let them see you’re here. They shouldn’t guess if you watch their every move. They must know you watch them.
Yesterday he spent the day in a sweltering stupor. Today he froze in this frigid mid-fifties that came across following last night’s tempest, unseasonable freakish weather for the middle of summer, but not if you lived long in Michigan.
The shambling mounds of the prisoners waddled into view. They had been dressed in hooded sweatshirts. From this distance they looked like a class of kindergartners out for gym, if you forgot that this prison only housed the most violent and dangerous criminals in the whole state. Arnie suspected the prison executives sometimes traded other states to get their toughest cases. The favors they exchanged must be surprising. Arnie scanned the concrete walls and the fifteen feet tall iron reinforced concrete posts standing at narrow paces gripping heavy-duty chain link fencing topped with razor wire. It blended into the same routine but that same habit kept him watching everything. He lifted his binoculars to touch his sight on further corners of the buildings and grounds. Then he saw them.
Black shapes.
His eyes narrowed. Arnie tightened the focus controls, spinning the little dial wheel between his fingers. The rest he couldn’t fully believe.
Six canisters puked over the walls from hidden locations in the remote shrubbery the landscape crews kept cut back from the walls. The canisters landed and burst open spewing massive smoke clouds. Another guard tripped the alarms before Arnie could reach the call box, setting off the wailing terror sirens. Orange clothed prisoners scattered and crouched by the walls or the picnic tables trying to avoid any potential gunfire.
Rapid gunfire flashed from the shrubbery. Bullets grazed the tower, incising deep spreading spider webs across the glass as the slugs struck them. Arnie dropped to the floor behind the protective tower wall and pulled his pistol. Protocol already locked down the prison sectioning off areas within the complex. The prison’s version of a SWAT team should be issuing forth any moment. Arnie crawled back to the tower door and pushed his way inside. He undid the latches and pulled the rifle away from its moorings. He checked the magazine and chambered a round as he crawled back to his concrete battlements.
The attackers leaped against the chain link fencing. They scampered up the walls. Arnie couldn’t believe how fast and supple they moved. As if they had special boots to grip the concrete walls and fencing plus what must be small wire cutters hidden in their hands to rip off the razor wire coils as they continued through the defenses. They knew or suspected electrified wires and either went over them, cut them, or shorted them out.
One of the prisoners previously standing motionless against the wall in the exercise yard walked toward the picnic tables. He lifted a heavy table and flipped it over, the retaining chain that lashed it to the concrete snapping as he did so. Arnie couldn’t believe the strength required to break the chain. The prisoner, huge among the hulking hard core prisoner population, wrapped both hands around the leg of the table and wrenched at the thick treated wood. The wood crackled, splintered, and pulled from its socket transforming into a battering club. Arnie raised his rifle and aimed at the prisoner.
Another barrage of smoke canisters puked over the walls. The smoke filtered like magician’s sheets across the field in wind gusted waves. Swirled in tight and loose patterns shifting in front and behind prisoners. Arnie lost the prisoner with the wooden club among the vapors. The dark clad prison response guards appeared amid the haze fanning across the exercise field while others sprinted outside the walls. Gunfire exchanged between the groups.
Arnie saw the prisoner materialize from the fog bank. He stood at the edge of the exercise yard and swung the wooden table leg like a baseball bat into the fence. Arnie remembered hitting such a fence when he struck out as a kid in a baseball game once. His bat bounced off the links and he received a scolding. The prisoner�
��s swing cut through the fence in a powerful slam stretching and snapping the steel links. The prisoner nodded. A crooked grin on his face like the rent in the fence as he pushed through and walked to the next barrier. Two of the attackers jumped to the ground, protectively circled behind him, and shot into the rapid response teams converging on the escaping prisoner.
Protocol and training kicked in. Arnie lifted his rifle and sighted through the scope. He aimed first to wound the prisoner. He squeezed the trigger twice flashing rounds into the prisoner’s calves. Arnie saw the orange pant legs puff with the bullet impact and blood mark them from the inside but they did not slow down the massive prisoner. Arnie swallowed and raised his sight. Three rapid squeezes into the prisoner’s thigh. The prisoner looked around like searching for the gnat that so stubbornly refused to stop biting. Then the prisoner raised the wood again and bashed through another chain link fence. Sparks flashed around him from where the ripped electrified fencing touched the ground. Arnie aimed squarely for the prisoner’s head. Two quick rounds entered the side of the prisoner’s skull, rattled around in there, and popped out the nasal cavity blowing big chunks of bone and blood into the dirt like red snot. The prisoner stopped like a statue. Dead fingers loosened on the wood and the lumber clattered at the prisoner’s feet. A filament of wind silently toppled the body down forward into a shifting wall of smoke.
The prison guards dragged six other bodies into a line with the big prisoner Arnie killed. None of the attackers escaped. They laid here in body bags now. The coroner and two guards loaded them like cord wood into the back of his van. The orange clothed prisoner the last onto the heap requiring two more guards to lift him up.
“What’s with the rescue team being all women? They look like hot college girls. Dead girls now though, a pity.”
“I’d want hot girls to rescue me,” said another guard. “Some crazy acrobatics and speed. Did he hire a defunct Olympic training team? I didn’t see them sweat in those suits. Cold determined killers.”
“European training program? I thought I heard German.”
“Too far away for me to hear anything. But they are bad news trying to release that guy.”
“What did he do to get in here? Why did they want him so badly?”
“A brilliant scientist that killed and ate half his wife’s body,” said a guard releasing the body bag, “I think the left side, a slice at a time.”
“Yuck,” said another guard.
“A lot of strange thugs out here.” the coroner said, “Good thing you got these people. The streets are staying safer.” The coroner wearily flipped his clipboard onto the pile of bodies, closed the van doors, and sighed. A lot of work for his small office to do – for him to do. Luckily, the area remained mostly quiet, or maybe unlucky if someone reviewed his tax filings from last year. “Call me next week Arnie. My sister should be back from her work trip. Like I said before, I think you two could hit it off.”
“She’s pretty, right?”
“Personality Arnie. Lots of personality.” he laughed getting behind the steering wheel. He closed the door and leaned out the open window, “Seriously Arnie, she’s hot and she’s nice. A rare combination. I’d like to get her married off so I don’t have to worry about her.” He laughed as he drove away.
“Always the comedian you are.” Arnie turned to his work.
Several miles away the coroner paused the van at the intersection where the county road crossed the road to his office. His truck shook back and forth as if he rolled through bad pot holes. But the county just laid this new pavement. The county spent the whole spring cordoning off the intersection and roads while they worked. A mess for him to drive around to the prison and glad when they reopened the road. So why did his truck shake? He next guessed the struts might be getting worn so he checked the mileage indicator and it showed ninety-two thousand miles. Probably due for some other service too. An excuse to get it in to his mechanic. The bodies piled back there might be approaching weight capacity. He quickly ran through approximate weights of each body, actually a skill of his knowing by sight within a pound what a body weighed. It got him in trouble with a few old girlfriends and he found the game unacceptable at a bar too, but a useful talent in his profession. He remembered the advertised capacity of the truck, “No, that’s not it.” Must be a worn strut and the truck would spend a week in the shop. He peered at the other stop signs. Seeing no other vehicles, he pressed the accelerator lightly to keep the bodies from shifting in the back.
An orange sleeved arm swung violently through the open window and its meaty hand grasped his throat, yanking him out of the moving truck. White fangs glinting from a bloody mangled face buried into his neck. The coroner’s truck listed quietly across the intersection drifting lost without a hand at its tiller. The gravel on the scuffed blacktop crunched under the tires before its bumper clanged into the far stop sign post that finally halted it.
The prisoner dropped the coroner’s body in the intersection like an empty pop bottle. He got in the truck, backed it away from the sign, and drove off. A pair of the attackers reached out from inside the back of the truck and swung the van’s rear doors closed, “All locked up, Jorg.”
“Good,” his voice rumbled. His vampire eyes determined under heavy brows as his face knitted back together.
The restored undead still had projects to complete this afternoon.
-:- One -:-
“When once you have tasted flight,
you will forever walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward,
for there you have been and there
you will always long to return.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
“Don't look back.
You're not going that way.”
– M S Linhart
The house and garage sat silent against the landscape. Branoc killed his car’s engine. Garin climbed out of the car looking around as if he expected to see something. Cold air swept into the cabin. Branoc motioned for Brett and me to stay seated. He scanned the landscape. Three sheep munched quietly on the lawn near the blacktop ribbon of a road beyond them that remained silent of traffic.
“Why no vehicle if they are here?”
“They’d put it in the garage,” Garin said. “I left room.” Garin’s black Camaro sat quietly tucked against the house and away from the garage.
Inside the car, Brett said to me, “Let’s go, the last time they left us in the car it ended badly.” I agreed. We stepped from the car behind Garin and Branoc. Garin flashed angry eyes at me but turned his attention back to the garage. Branoc scanned the landscape as we approached the garage door. Garin typed the security code into the external activator and the metal door trundled up. The big red pickup stood like a mountain man in crimson gingham inside. The overhead light flickered on as the door finished its cycle and banged into place along the ceiling.
“Hello? Uncle Tremper?” Garin said.
The sound of a child’s muffled whimper came from behind a pile of Garin’s car parts. Garin walked over and lifted a door panel away from the pile. Behind it, my niece Julie cowered. She stood up bravely. I ran to her and hugged her tight. Tears bursting upon my cheeks. She shivered more than the chill air outside.
“Hello Garin.”
I turned toward the voice that seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
Garin grabbed the voice’s hand, “Uncle Tremper! Glad you’re here.”
“Yes. The others are here too.” Uncle Tremper looked like a classic movie vampire in his black sport coat and white business shirt. His gray hair holding streaks of black slicked back close to his scalp. His aquiline nose fit with his other sharp and pointed facial features emanating around his shrewd eyes that gleamed of experience and knowledge. Those stark vampire eyes seemed to look through her.
A few rumples revealed themselves – scuffs on his shoes and chalk-like marks on his pants. A tear in the jacket fabric from a sword point. Bits of blood sprayed over the lower coat pock
ets. Dust and dirt ground into the sleeves and back of his jacket. He flourished his arm over the piles of metal and plastic automotive parts, “Why don’t you come out?”
Other pieces of metal leaned back and my nieces and nephews rose slowly from the rubble. They had seen more than kids should ever see. More than adults could stay sane with. I waved them to me and I hugged them all. My sister put her hand to my shoulder. I turned and hugged her. Tears ran down both of our faces.
“I’m so sorry about Michael.”
“I will really miss him,” she mouthed. Her face screwed up in sorrow.
“I know. How couldn’t you miss him?”
“So awful Anna, I can’t believe it.”
I could believe it. If anything like my experience. I ran my hands over my sister’s kids. Like CPR class looking for potential injuries but I found every one of them all right. “They are perfect.” I hugged the shocked children to me.
Uncle Tremper turned to Garin, a touch of anger behind his words, “You gave over the lab equipment in an untraceable container?”
“We protected it,” Garin said, “Reginald helped us protect it.”
“While Reginald is a good man, and brilliant, you can’t really protect that kind of system. If you have the basic modules, the chemistry is simple. Like making a batch of beer. Doesn’t matter if your pot has a hole in it, you can weld it up or wedge a cork in it.”
Branoc asked, “How did you find them?”
“I’ve been tracking some of the assassins after following my sister’s murder.” Uncle Tremper turned to Branoc, “Have you learned anything yet about her death?”
Branoc said, “Yashar killed her.”
“He may have killed her or at a minimum arranged the murder. But he wasn’t behind it.”
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3) Page 18