Immediately, Raina saw death. Half of Ethan’s head was missing, a mangled mess of meat remaining where the right side of his face and forehead had once been, and blood had drenched his clothes almost completely from several bullet wounds his torso had sustained. Thomas’s face was contorted with pain from a visible wound to his left arm, but he remained dutifully atop Sophie, who presently appeared unharmed but hysterical with absolute fear. Raina could see the front cab area of the limo through the shattered glass partition. The driver was motionlessly slumped over to one side.
“Get up, get up!” Raina said hurriedly in a hushed voice as she began to push Svetlana off of her. “C’mon, move! We’ve gotta…”
It was only then, as Raina rolled onto her back and began to use both hands to push Svetlana aside that she felt a hot, horrible wetness between her fingers. Svetlana groaned a bit louder as Raina inadvertently put a hand right over the wound in her left side where a bullet had pierced her body, the material of her red silk dress stained even redder with blood. Additionally, Svetlana’s right shoulder was clearly wounded by another round that had punched its way through her flesh, just below her collar bone. Svetlana was alive, and the wounds weren’t likely to be mortal, but she was clearly in a great deal of pain.
Thomas pushed himself up off of Sophie and glanced back over his shoulder out of the shattered and bullet-riddled side window that was held in place only by a film of dark tint. He cursed under his breath and forced himself upright, grimacing with pain from the wound to his arm.
“Go, go, go!” he urged Raina with a frantic wave as he began to try to lift a cowering and sobbing Sophie, even in spite of his wounded arm.
Carefully but hurriedly sliding herself out from under Svetlana, Raina was able to sit upright enough to look at what Thomas had seen. Two men wearing dark clothes and ski masks approached the limo from less than a hundred feet away. Their assault rifles were shouldered and ready, and their laser sights cut through the slight haze of steam, dust, and tire smoke left in the wake of the automotive carnage. By the way they moved, their attire, and their weapons, Raina guessed they were either highly trained assassins or terrorists … and well-funded ones, at that. Though she was by no means an expert in using one, Raina dearly wished that she had a firearm of her own in that moment, rather than the custom-made sword she still clutched in one hand. Thanks to England’s draconian gun control laws and further legal restrictions upon vampires, she had essentially been forced to bring a knife to a gunfight.
“C’mon, folks, we gotta bail,” Raina told Svetlana as she reached over, grabbed the door latch, and awkwardly jerked it open.
No sooner had she pushed the side door open than another chatter of gunfire erupted from the killers. Sophie squealed and stayed upon the floor, clasping her hands defensively behind her head, while Thomas ducked and began to crouch down. Raina looked back in time to see a burst of red erupt from Thomas’s chest as a round struck him from behind, exiting his upper-right torso, and another bullet visibly struck his right arm an instant later before he could fully drop forward on top of Sophie again. More shattering glass, more metal banging upon metal, and now Raina could even hear the sound of empty brass casings tinkling upon the pavement outside, like someone steadily spilling a handful of pocket change.
Realizing that the limo would soon become their coffin if they remained any longer, Raina waited only for the first instant that the gunfire stopped again before she practically dove out of the vehicle. She scrabbled about on her hands and knees, not caring that her stockings were being shredded as she did so, and she managed to get her back up against the rear fender, shielding herself with the rear axle and wheels of the limo. She grasped her sheathed sword in both hands and began to wonder what she should do with the last moments of her life.
Raina heard voices, shouts, and screams from people all about her upon the busy city street, the traffic upon which had either came to a screeching halt or was trying to hightail it out of the combat zone. Glancing back, she saw that the trailing police escort vehicle was nowhere in sight; presumably, they had been paid to leave before the shooting had even begun. Regular commuters and pedestrians were seeking cover frantically, some jumping out of their cars and running for it while others simply dropped to the pavement to duck and cover right where they were. The only people that weren’t interested in seeking shelter were the throng of ever-present paparazzi. They peeked out from behind car fenders and opened doors, not foolish enough to put themselves directly in harm’s way but nevertheless determined to snap those all-important still photos and roll that video footage they knew would be worth plenty of money to the world’s tabloids and news organizations.
Raina was tempted to scream for help, but just as well she realized that doing so would likely only result in drawing the killers’ attention. Just the same, the only thing those bloodthirsty ambulance-chasers cared about was getting good photos and footage, so it would have been a wasted effort, anyway. Wouldn’t that look great? The Grand Duchess of the International Vampiric Council, screaming for help and flailing her arms to no avail before being gunned down by some hired thugs or fanatical terrorists or … well, whatever the hell they were. That would do little to glorify the sacrifices others had made for her sake, including Svetlana, who had shielded her from greater harm with her own body. What would Brenna have thought if she knew that Raina had met her fate while begging for mercy or pleading for humans to save her? What would the rest of the IVC have thought, the rest of the High Court … the rest of the world, for that matter, if they saw the Grand Duchess in such a helpless state, even if it were only to be in her last moments of life? Was that how she wanted to be remembered? Was that how the Fallamhain legacy would end?
Raina made her decision, resolving herself to the fact that this was going to end very soon, one way or another. Steeling herself, she drew her sword from its simple black cord-wrapped aluminum sheath. The sword was largely modeled after a common katana, a traditional Japanese long sword used by the samurai, which was the weapon she had chiefly practiced with during her years of shinkendo training. Given, she had practiced all those years without the intention of ever actually needing to actually use those skills in a real combat situation, instead having done so for the sake of sport, self-discipline, and physical exercise. It had been something of a miracle that she had actually found those skills to be superior to those of her enemy when she had defeated Countess Wilhelmina. Alas, she wasn’t sure if there was any hope for using a sword against two trained killers with automatic rifles – again, just a big knife in a gunfight.
Traffic to the left of her, going in the opposite direction, had now stopped as those far enough away had stopped in advance of seeing the scene that was unfolding, not wanting to come close enough to be at risk of becoming directly involved. The right-hand lanes of traffic were similarly halted, although they had stopped a much greater distance away. Apparently, they had seen the initial attack and had likely slammed on their brakes right away to avoid the mess. The limo was essentially isolated from all of the other vehicles, so Raina had no opportunity to use any of them for cover to sneak around to the opposite side and…
“Behind you!” someone in the limo yelled.
A soft mechanical click sounded to her right as she had been looking back inside the limo to try to watch for the approach of the killers. Turning toward the sound, she found the muzzle of a huge rifle only inches away from her face. The click sounded again as the man in black – well, presumably a man, given his size – pulled the trigger of his assault rifle at point-blank range. There was no bang, no flash, no recoil, and no pain … because there was an empty shell jammed halfway out of the rifle’s ejection port on the side.
“Shit,” she heard him mutter as he immediately dropped the rifle and began to back away.
As the man began to reach for a pistol he had waiting in a holster strapped to his leg, Raina recovered from the initial shock of realizing she’d been only one bullet away from an
unforeseen death. She dropped the sheath of her sword, took her weapon in both hands, and from her crouched position she arose and stepped forth to make a single downward crossing stroke with the finely polished, silver-plated blade, all in a smooth, well-rehearsed, single motion. He drew his pistol and raised it, but before he could squeeze the trigger, thirty inches of steel passed almost effortlessly through flesh, bone, muscle, and fabric. Raina had sidestepped him slightly and turned in making her cut. In a blink, both of the man’s arms dropped, severed cleanly at mid-forearm.
Raina did not even hesitate long enough for the severed limbs to strike the pavement. She immediately reversed the direction of her weapon in an upward thrust. The tip of her weapon entered just below his ribcage and traveled easily upward, stopping only when Raina felt the hilt of her sword jam against his belly while the leading edge emerged from his back. Her attacker barely could manage a strangled, choked scream of sorts, more so in reaction to the shock of losing both hands than to being impaled by cold steel.
Raina felt no personal satisfaction in doing this, or at least not at that point in time. The actions came to her like a knee-jerk reflex, something that happened as thoughtlessly as swatting away a fly or scratching a random itch. The fear was real, oh yes, but she was so scared and yet so pre-programmed for combat that she felt utterly detached from the moment. She might as well have been watching some kind of graphic action movie from a first-person perspective, as her body seemed to be almost entirely on auto-pilot.
Raina stood there for perhaps two full seconds as it only then occurred to her what she had just done. The almost immediate and sharp, strong smell of blood in the air brought her back to her senses abruptly. Realizing that her weapon was the only thing holding her foe aloft, she lowered it slightly to allow him to fall backwards and begin to slide off of its blade. As he fell to his knees, the last six inches or so of the lengthy blade remained within him. Raina freed her weapon at last from his torso by placing a stiletto heel against his chest and giving him a shove-like kick that sent him over backward.
Just as she began to turn to her right away from her fallen enemy, facing the back of the limo, a blur of motion within close proximity made her almost instinctively flinch down and aside. There was a deafening pop and an almost blinding flash as the second attacker fired at her from less than two yards away, missing her head by only a few inches. The report of the gunshot felt like someone stabbing her in the left ear with a knife. In fact, she was momentarily convinced that she’d been hit in the head or at least deeply grazed by the shot.
But she did not give pause, lunging forward and thrusting outward single-handedly with her sword toward the source of the attack. It was a sloppy attack. Only the first inch or so of the blade found him, piercing her enemy at groin-level and slightly to his left, but it definitely was enough to make him flinch. In reaction to the wound and her surprise counter-attack, he fired again. She had already been momentarily deafened by the first shot, her ears ringing painfully, so the gunshots that followed sounded more like a muffled pop, pop instead of a boom, boom. Those two rounds went high and wide as he arched his back slightly and curled slightly to his left, sending them off into the cloudy evening sky.
Raina’s thrust of the sword and the man’s forward motion as he began to step toward her brought his weapon within her reach. With her left hand, she grabbed the underside of the assault rifle’s long barrel and held it up, and she immediately regretted doing so. Everything was muted and largely drowned out by a painfully high-pitched ringing in her ears, but she could actually feel the hissing of her flesh as it sizzled upon the extremely hot surface of the gun barrel.
Before she could withdraw her blade from his body and then lunge forth again to stab him once more, the burn of the hot gun barrel in her hand quickly became too much to bear, even in spite of the adrenaline coursing through her body. She gasped and reflexively let go of the gun to retract her hand, jerking her sword free of him in the same instant. The move only caused her attacker a brief hesitation of pain, and he was soon trying to aim the weapon at her once more at point-blank range, taking a step away from her as he did so.
She could not close the distance between them enough to grab hold of him, not to mention the fact that her left hand was now curled into a painful, useless half-fist from the burn she’d suffered. Dropping to one knee to get below his aim as the attacker again attempted to shoot her in the face, Raina made an awkward one-handed slash that drew the blade across his midsection. The cut was neither deep nor anywhere close to lethal, but it was long and (presumably) painful as she saw the material of the man’s black sweatshirt parting to reveal what appeared to be impossibly pale white flesh underneath.
Raina stepped forth to her left, bringing her sword upward and laying its cutting edge against the underside of the killer’s bare right forearm to deflect his aim as he began to swing the muzzle of his rifle downward, either to aim for her once more or simply in reaction to the cut she’d just made. With the sleeves of the man’s black sweatshirt pushed up to his biceps, she could actually see the blade cutting into his flesh slightly as she arose to stand beside him. Raina drew the blade back slightly to worsen the wound as she stood behind him. Forcing herself to ignore the pain of her burned left hand, she nevertheless used it to grab the material of his black ski mask at the top of his head, pull back, and then bring the blade of her sword up to his throat.
She wasn’t sure, at least in that instant, what it was that made her hesitate to kill him. Her actions had been coming automatically, with barely even the slightest bit of forethought, and she had every intention of laying that length of cold, blood-smeared steel against his neck and drawing it all the way across. She felt no pity for him, not in the least, and she would have been perfectly justified in doing so. But in that one second of hesitation she was afforded between the time she got behind him and put the sword to his throat, she finally had time to think – perhaps the first such moment since before she’d even drawn her sword. The questions that had been racing through her mind from the time the first bullets had been fired finally escaped her lips as she spoke directly into his ear.
“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded. “Why are you doing this?”
The man said nothing in reply … or, even if he did, she couldn’t hear him, as her hearing was still mostly ruined. Slowly indicating his surrender, the assassin took his right hand away from the rifle and held up his wounded arm as he held the weapon away with his left for a moment before letting it clatter to the ground. Given the way she had cut him, slicing neatly through muscle and nerves and tendons, it was actually possible that he might not have been able to squeeze the trigger anymore, even if he’d wanted to. Blood was dribbling rapidly from the deep gash in his forearm, dripping off his elbow. She probably could have heard the sound of it trickling upon the pavement if not for the damage done to her eardrums. The air was thick with the scents of wet blacktop, spent smokeless gunpowder, and blood.
“Who sent you?” Raina yelled into his ear through the ski mask as she pressed the blade more firmly against his throat.
No sooner had she said that than she saw just over the roofline of the limousine that yet another man was approaching. Seeing that he was holding a pistol in both hands and had already begun to swing its aim in her direction, Raina ducked down slightly below the shoulder-line of the man that she held, someone that was significantly taller. As she did so, glancing down, she saw that her captive enemy also had a holstered pistol strapped to his right thigh. Without thinking twice, she simply let go of her sword and let it fall as she grabbed for the pistol, jerking it free of its holster and bringing it up to aim at the third gunman.
Even as she was still squeezing her finger back to complete that long double-action trigger pull, shots rang out. With her chest pressed against the man’s back, she felt each of those shots thump against his body. Raina could not aim as precisely as she would have liked, not with a one-handed grip and from such a position, bu
t remembering what Loki had taught her, she simply aimed for “center of mass” and hoped for the best.
The first shot seemed to hit him, but the recoil from the pistol jerked the gun up high enough that when she pulled the trigger a second time the shot went high – a consequence of the trigger now being a shorter single-action pull on the follow-up shots. Raina quickly brought the gun down a bit more as the third gunman sent another two shots her way. She managed to hit him again, a puff of red mist bursting from his right shoulder. The impact of the wound stunned him just long enough for her to take a split second longer to better aim her next shot. With her enemy having reduced the distance between them to less than fifteen feet, she managed to make her fourth bullet count. An almost theatrical spray of bright red blood erupted from the man’s neck as the round tore a rather gory hole through his throat. He dropped his weapon and fell back and to his right side as he clutched at the instantly gushing wound.
The man that Raina had been using as a shield dropped to his knees. Her tight grip upon the ski mask as she tried to hold him aloft pulled the mask from his head and revealed a white male with short, dark brown hair that was matted wetly with dark fluids. He fell aside at her feet and she took a step back, instinctively aiming the pistol at him … although she quickly realized he was no longer any kind of a threat. A bullet from his would-be partner had plowed through his right temple and out the opposite side of his cranium. Raina only then became aware of the blood and gore that now covered her left shoulder as a result of her enemy’s death. She could see now that the pale white flesh she had glimpsed after cutting his torso was not skin but actually a white bulletproof vest. Obviously, it had done nothing to protect him from the bullet that had plowed through his head, but it had probably saved Raina from the others that had struck his torso. She would later learn that the bullets that had hit him had actually passed through the front side of his body armor before being stopped by the back half of his vest, rather than continuing on into Raina.
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 10