“Damn it all! What a strange expression... Where did I hear it?”
“Come here immediately! I can’t keep the press around any longer.”
“Sugar,” he couldn’t remember her name. “I have a little problem.”
“What?”
He looked in the rearview mirror. “There are fifteen police cars on my tail.”
The woman swore and then the dial tone sounded, followed by heavy music.
He twisted the wheel and ducked into a narrow street. Pressing the handbrake button, he jerked the wheel in the opposite direction and hit the brakes. The car spun around in a semicircle. The left side of the car lifted slightly, then slammed back down onto the asphalt. Pressing the button again, he stomped on the gas pedal, driving it into the floor. Smoke trickled out from beneath the hood of his car, but he didn’t care. He would buy another car. Or several.
A bald young man, dressed in a pair of old, black jeans and a leather jacket, was crossing the street when the car, snarling like a wounded animal and emitting clouds of smoke, ran into the oncoming traffic, right into a row of police officers. At the last second, he managed to avoid the pedestrian.
“Are you suicidal?” He shouted at the man. He seemed vaguely familiar.
In the rearview mirror, he saw a middle finger with the word DOOM tattooed across its length.
“Bastard!” He shouted.
But, after getting back to playing cat and mouse with the cops, he soon forgot about the man.
***
A once-luxurious sports car with broken windows, numerous dents, and its doors almost torn off, stopped at the gate of a fashionable estate. A young man got out of the car, kicking the door clean off to do so. He was unshaven, dressed in a crumpled three-piece suit with a red tie, and carrying an open bottle of whiskey.
“I showed them,” he said to a startled girl.
She was tall and slender, with thick, black hair and well-defined cheekbones. She had a slim waist, long legs, and magnificent breasts. Unfortunately, he didn’t remember her name, or whether he had slept with her or not. Although, knowing him, he probably had.
Sirens sounded behind them.
“Okay, maybe I didn’t.” He smiled, handing the girl the bottle. “You’ll take care of them for me, won’t you?”
She accepted the bottle automatically and watched the man walk away. He blew his nose into the rose bushes, then scratched his ass, and finally, he tucked his shirt into his trousers.
She swore, but he didn’t hear her.
***
“Here we are, sir.”
He jerked awake and hit his forehead against the glass. Damned limos and their bulletproof windows! One day, he would become a cursed unicorn!
“Thanks.” He took two crisp bills from his wallet and placed them on the seat.
“Sir, I’m your driver. I already get paid.”
“Really? I thought you were a taxi driver.” He still left the money there.
“Sir, you should take better care of yourself.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Talking to the driver, whom he’d never seen before because of the limo’s partition, always calmed him down. “Good night, Ted.”
“Good night, Dark-”
The sound of the limo door slamming shut interrupted the driver. The car remained parked on the sidewalk in front of an apartment complex — a huge, fifty-two-story skyscraper. He owned one of the two penthouses on the top floor.
After greeting the doorman, he entered the lobby. It was spacious, flooded with artificial light, had a marble floor, granite reception desk, and the receptionists were always nice and friendly. They somehow managed to stay cheerful even at such a late hour.
“Good evening, Mr. Dark-”
The sound of a lift coming down drowned out the greeting of one of the girls. He’d slept with her last week. Or was it the week before? It got hard to keep track of his numerous girlfriends sometimes.
Once inside, he ran his keycard across the touch panel and pressed a button. The doors closed and the lift went up. It had been so much easier when he hadn’t known anything about sex...
The doors opened, letting him enter a vast expanse of empty space. Right next to the kitchen set, a mattress lay on the floor, with a TV right in front of it. A little farther away, in front of the panoramic window, which afforded him a view that wasn’t that much different from the one he’d had in the hospital, there was a pile of tech he used to make music, including his old laptop.
As soon as he went over to the refrigerator, which was filled to the brim with various bottles of alcohol, the TV turned on.
“So, Mr. Dark-”
He slammed the door shut, opened a bottle of beer by hitting the cap against the edge of the kitchen counter, then plopped down on the mattress.
“...three years ago, when you first came out of the hospital, what did you want to do the most?”
Accompanied by the applause and cheers of the audience, he’d come out, clean-shaven and more than presentable. It was amazing — they’d shot this interview just three hours ago, but they’d already managed to turn his ghastly visage into the face of the hottest man of the month during postproduction. He didn’t know which month it was right now, though. He could barely even remember the year.
“That it would be nice to download a map onto my smartphone,” he said.
“Why?” The shorthaired interviewer asked.
“To find out where the nearest strip club is.”
Everyone was shocked at first, but then they laughed.
He turned off the TV.
What had really been his first thought three years ago? To buy a ticket to North America and go on a road trip along Route 66. That ticket was now buried somewhere in the pile of empty bottles and other assorted junk. However, he’d never managed to leave this accursed city.
He rubbed his chest, which itched again as he felt the emptiness, drained the bottle in one gulp, and fell asleep.
***
“Did you truly desire such a life, Dark-”
Suddenly, he woke up. Looking at his watch, he realized that he’d gotten maybe an hour of sleep. It was four in the morning
“Damn this city to hell,” he muttered, getting to his feet and hobbling over to the sink. He washed his face with dish soap. “Why can’t I sleep?”
He realized that someone was ringing the doorbell.
“Who the hell could that be at this hour?”
He walked down the huge, empty hallway and opened the door. There were only two apartments on his floor. He’d bought his when the building had first been built, and had hoped that no one who could afford to pay so much for an apartment would want to live next door to a drug addict and drunk. After all, all the rich people knew each other in this city.
“I’m sorry.” He almost stumbled and fell when he saw a pretty girl of about eighteen at his door. Surprisingly, she was the same kind of girl his assistants tended to be: athletic, busty, and dark-haired. “My name is Anise. I’m your new neighbor.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Can you help me with my faucet?”
He noticed that she was holding a wrench. He also realized that she was only wearing a shirt, one that was completely soaked through, revealing her bra.
“I can give you the phone number of the maintenance department.”
“I’ve already called them.” The girl shook her head. “They said it’ll take them half an hour to get here. My apartment will be flooded by then.”
He sighed.
“Well, okay then.” He took the wrench from her, even though he couldn’t use it. He was hypnotized by her incredible body.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
“Dark-”
He didn’t get to finish speaking. The annoyance of being interrupted felt oddly familiar. The service elevator’s doors slid open. Three very creepy men stepped into the hallway. One of them held a silenced pistol. He heard the muffled sound of a gunshot, followed by a scr
eam.
“What a fucking evening!”
Chapter 555
The bullet whizzed past him and lodged itself in the wall. He ducked through the open door of the other penthouse, rolled across the carpet, and closed the door with his foot before anyone could break in.
“Thank you,” he heard from behind him.
He turned around and saw the girl crouching nearby. What was her name again? Some kind of flower — Anise.
“Don’t mention it,” he answered. To be honest, he had forgotten about her while trying to save his own skin. He was about to say something when he was interrupted by a burst of machinegun fire raining down on the penthouse door.
“Damn it!” He cursed and rolled out of the line of fire.
When he’d originally bought the place, he’d been baffled by the designers’ decision to install reinforced steel doors, but right now, he was grateful for it.
His assailants, whoever they were, clearly didn’t plan to give up. After emptying an entire gun store’s worth of ammo, they quieted down.
However, he knew his troubles were far from over.
Who are these people? He was kneeling under the kitchen counter, groping for a frying pan. When he found it, he squeezed its handle as if it were the only thing that could save him from certain death. Tomie’s people? But I paid him back! The police? No, they wouldn’t do anything illegal. The Morishima clan? Those damned Asians might’ve misunderstood my-
He suddenly realized that there were too many people in this accursed city who wanted to kill him.
“Do you-”
He turned to Anise, but she was no longer behind him. Looking around, he saw her standing near a wardrobe, which turned out to be a built-in safe. Instead of jewelry and money, it was full of various guns, from miniature single-shot revolvers that could be hidden in a purse, to monstrous Desert Eagles that were almost one and a half feet long.
“What the fuck?”
Anise ignored him, pulling the hem of her dress up (she’d gotten rid of her soaked shirt). Instead of a garter, there was a leather belt around her stockings, into which she shoved two pistols and a long, leaf-shaped knife. She already had a submachine gun strapped across her back and two more pistols with silencers in her hands.
“Can you shoot?” She asked.
He wanted to say that he only knew how to go to the toilet because he really needed to right about now, but he resisted the urge. His heart was beating so fast that he was afraid it would jump out of his chest.
“That’s a no, then.” Anise nodded, snatched something from the safe, and tossed it to him. He didn’t want to injure himself by trying to catch the weapon, so he stepped to the side to avoid it. A long, narrow Chinese sword landed next to him with a clatter. Just for a fraction of a moment, it seemed familiar to him.
“What’s going on?” He shouted, the seriousness of the situation finally hitting him.
Anise, ignoring his question, checked the safeties on her pistols and holstered them. The slim girl no longer looked like someone who couldn’t handle a leaking faucet on her own, but like an action hero who could take down an elite squad of mercenaries singlehandedly.
“Can you give me a hand with this?” She nodded at the sofa that stood not far from the door.
“What?”
“They’re going to blow up the door,” she explained, growing tired of his incompetence. “We need to slow them down.”
“The door?” He squeaked. “Blow up?”
Anise rolled her eyes.
“Are you going to help me or not? We’re running out of time.”
Swallowing noisily, hiccupping, almost fainting from the terror, he rose stiffly to his feet and started toward her.
“Don’t forget the sword! And throw away that ridiculous pan.”
Like a puppet, he turned around and walked back to the sword. As he did so, after a particularly intense surge of adrenaline, he decided that nobody gets to boss him around and proudly... stuck the frying pan in his belt.
He wasn’t sure why, but he took a kitchen towel, tied it around his waist, then stuck the sword through it.
“Cool!” Anise smiled. “Where did you learn to do that?”
That’s when he realized what he’d done.
“I…” For some reason, he could hear the distant echo of war drums in the back of his mind. “I…”
“Help me with the sofa!”
“I,” he said a little stiffly, then exhaled. “Of course.”
Working together, they moved the sofa over to the door, leaving some room between them. Anise knocked down a couple more shelves and cabinets, then, ducking behind them, grabbed the machinegun from over her shoulder. Sitting next to her and shaking like he was in the middle of an icy wilderness, he frantically counted the seconds. He’d heard that counting helped one calm down in stressful situations. Having tried it for himself, he could safely assume that whoever had made that claim had never been under fire.
“Who are you?” He squeaked again. “Why do they want to kill you?”
“Stop being so loud,” she said. They heard the men outside place something very heavy against the door. “I’m Anise, daughter of the Head of the Predatory Bla-”
A deafening explosion drowned out the rest of her sentence. As if she’d spent all her life doing nothing but shooting, Anise crouched down on one knee and, resting her elbow on a small shoe rack for balance, put her finger on the trigger. There was a click, followed by a fiery rain of bullets.
They fired back.
He was curled up on the floor, hands pressed against his ears, clearly shouting something, but even he didn’t understand what. When his throat started to ache from all the screaming, he shut up.
“Help,” he croaked.
One of the bullets missed his temple by a couple of inches, making a hole in the huge window behind them. Three more bullets followed, and the glass shattered into a million little pieces. The wind blew in, scattering papers and disturbing the curtains.
“Dark-”
He groped around, looking for something. Finding a phone, he squeezed it tightly. He turned it on and cursed — he had neither internet access nor a signal.
“Jammers!” Anise explained.
Setting the machinegun aside, she started firing the two silenced pistols.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” The girl shouted.
Tossing away one of the pistols, she continued to fire back, her other hand reloading the submachine gun lying next to her with the eerie composure of a professional. He noticed a scarlet stain on her right shoulder. Blood trickled to the floor, coming out of her wound.
“You’re-”
“It doesn’t matter!” Anise snapped.
She suddenly swayed. A bullet whizzed past her head as she fell to the floor, pale as a ghost.
“Flank her!” Someone shouted from the corridor. “Tobias, take the corpses with you!”
Corpses?
“The window,” Anise croaked, holding her injured shoulder. “There’s a cleaning platform on the other side.”
“What?”
“It’s two floors down… We have to jump. Otherwise, we’re both dead.”
He peeked out from behind the wardrobe they’d used as cover. There were four bodies on the floor. Eight men in black suits and sunglasses were placing them against the walls of the hallway.
“Damn it!” He picked Anise up in his arms.
“Damn it!” He straightened up.
“Damn it!” He ran toward the window.
“Shoot!”
Bullets whizzed past all around him. His right side was badly injured.
God damn this old wound of mine! Wait, old wound?
Instead of jumping, the two of them simply fell from the 52nd floor of the skyscraper.
Chapter 556
While falling, he managed to twist around and, holding Anise as tightly as he could, land shoulder-first on the iron platform. The pain made his vision explode in a flurry of white
and red flashes. Before he could recover, Anise pulled a lever. The platform suddenly dropped with a screech. He saw the men in suits leaning out of the window with weapons at the ready, but they didn’t fire.
“They… need me… alive. They won’t shoot… to kill,” Anise panted. She took out a knife and cut off the hem of her dress. Ripping it in half to make two strips of fabric, she handed them to him. “Bandage me up.”
He was about to say that he didn’t know how to do that, but the glare she shot him with her catlike green eyes made him shut up.
“Damn it,” he cursed.
Making Anise growl with pain, he didn’t bandage her wound so much as bind it. The platform had already descended to the twentieth floor.
“Take it.” She handed him the gun. “I’ve already flipped the safety off. All you have to do is aim and pull the trigger.”
As soon as his fingers touched the uncomfortably hot grip of the gun, a gust of wind tousled his long, black hair. It seemed to be whispering something. Something very important…
“Focus!” Anise’s cry snapped him out of it.
He looked down. There, near the exit, stood a dozen armed men.
“We’re doomed…”
Anise took out something small and oval from under her dress. She pulled the pin out with her teeth and threw it down. Shouting in alarm, the armed men scattered. Three seconds later, when the platform was at the fifth floor, a powerful explosion shattered the nearby windows, sending shards flying toward them.
A couple of shards hit him, making him cry out in pain. He yelled even louder when the cables broke. The platform flew the final four floors down and landed on the roof of a parked jeep. His scream turned into a moan.
“We need to leave.” Anise rolled over and pulled him down.
As his body fell to the pavement, he realized that he hadn’t lost the sword. He wondered when and where he’d learned how to make impromptu sheaths.
“Dark-”
He turned abruptly. He was sure that he’d heard someone call out to him.
“Don’t just stand there!” Anise shouted.
Dragon Heart: Land of Demons. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 7 Page 9