Vampire "Unseen" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 2) (28 page)

Fuck... it clicked.

He had to do it, he had to open and rush.

One... Two... Three...

He pressed the handle and pushed hard to throw the door. A man sprung from a chair and threw it at the doorway. It didn’t look like McGovern but he moved as fast as Bogdan expected. In the time it took him to extend his arm and pull the trigger the chair was hurtling through the air towards him and McGovern had ducked out of sight.

The gun kicked in his hand before the chair hit him. The bullet hit the window on the far side knocking a hole in the glass and dragging the net curtain through it.

Something high.

Bogdan raised the gun and fired.

A pillow, thrown around the corner. He was aiming high.

McGovern came in low, kicked up the fallen chair towards Bogdan’s chest.

Bad situation, trapped in the tiny hallway by the bathroom at the entrance to the room.

Bogdan threw himself backwards, breaking back out into the corridor and falling to the floor. He extended the guns again. McGovern was crouched, he held two knives in his hands, he was snarling like a lion. Above him, Bogdan saw Cornel standing, bleeding, badly injured.

McGovern snapped forward. Bogdan pushed back and pulled the trigger knowing he might hit Latis. McGovern anticipated the move and ducked to the side of the shot. Bogdan had thought he was coming straight for him. He wasn’t. McGovern’s low dive was to the door. He slammed it shut with Bogdan out in the corridor. The lock engaged. There was a thud, the chair perhaps, barricading the other side of the door.

Corneliu...

Corneliu was in there.

----- X -----

Paul grabbed the laptop and yelled to Noica on the video call. “I will fucking kill you for what you’ve just done.” He slung the bag across his head and shoulder, snapped the laptop closed and jammed it inside.

Corneliu was standing, backing towards the window.

Fuck this guy.

Paul swung a knife harshly catching him on the cheek. The blade peeled through his face and jarred across his teeth. His top lip cut from his mouth to hang loose. Paul swung the opposite knife and stabbed the other cheek flaying off Corneliu’s nose. He started falling backwards, his skull exposed in two swift cuts, his bare teeth and sinus cavity rendered open and bloody.

He crashed backwards taking a bedside lamp down with him.

The lock clicked.

The gunman was coming in.

He barely thought of the action. It was automatic. He ran at the window, bounced high from putting a foot into the bloody armchair and crashed through the glass in a ball as he felt a bullet shoot past his ear.

Freefall. Ten feet. He hit the roof of the courtyard and rolled, cradling the laptop. He looked up and saw the gunman at the window. There was a puff of smoke by his feet and a vibration like someone had inflicted a hammer blow to the ground beside him, but he didn’t hear a shot.

He turned and ran to the edge of the apron, hoping to jump down into the street. The rain obscured things. It was raining harder now. It was dark. He heard wailing sirens. He got to the edge and saw two bright red cars with flashing blue lights concealed in the bumper. The cars screeched to a halt outside the entrance. Men jumped out. He saw them pull on baseball caps, black and white checker pattern running around the brim. Police insignia. Then came the guns. Heckler and Koch, MP7 machine guns. Another police car arrived. Uniformed police, high visibility vests, sealing off the area.

Trapped. Pinned between a gunman on the second floor and armed police out the front.

He spun, looked for an exit.

Light on the roof. He ran through the rain to the chink of light he could see. It was a skylight that dropped into a back office, probably the back of the reception area. There were desks directly below. Back to back desks with computer monitors.

He didn’t have a choice. He smashed it with his heel and jumped in. As he fell he noticed the gunman from the second floor was hanging from the window, preparing to drop, giving chase.

He hit the computer monitors hard, the desk buckled and collapsed. For a moment he was wrapped in computer cables and paperwork.

“Are you alright?” A slim man in a front of house uniform was offering a hand to lift him. Paul grabbed him, got up, pulled a knife and swung the man to the wall.

“Listen... or I’ll kill you... There is a parking garage below here. Are they guest cars?” The boy hummed a response that sounded like affirmative. “Take me there, now. If I get stopped I will slit your throat.” Paul pulled the man ahead of him, holding him by the collar and keeping the knife blade pressed to his cheek. “Which way?” he screamed.

“Here... here...” the man pointed to a door at the back of the office. Paul pushed him firmly, quickly. He dared look behind at the hole in the skylight. The gunman wasn’t there yet.

As they exited the back office Paul could see through to the reception. The police were running through the lobby. One of the baseball capped armed police was barking instructions to the concierge about getting the lobby clear.

Paul kept pushing the hotel clerk who led him through a second door, they passed a petite girl with tightly curled blonde hair who stared at them open mouthed. They made it into a thin set of concrete stairs. At the bottom, the final door opened to the garage.

A bright red Ferrari, black BMW, an orange Porsche.

“Where are the keys to the cars?” Paul asked.

“They’re in the cars.”

“Really?” It seemed stupid. They could be stolen. Then Paul looked up the exit ramp and noticed the garage was now covered by a roller shutter that had to be raised. “How do we open the doors?”

“In the office,” he pointed to an unmanned glass booth and Paul pushed him to it. The door was locked. Paul slammed the knife into the glass with all his force shattering the pane. He swiped at the window, shards and crystals of glass falling away.

“Open it. Open the shutter or I will kill you.”

The clerk leaned in and pressed a button. The barrier began rolling up with a mechanical whirring sound. Paul turned him by his collar and pushed him back towards the cars. The BMW was the least conspicuous. He looked in, the keys were in the ignition.

“Thank you,” Paul said and jammed the knife deep into the back of the clerk’s knee, bringing him down with a shriek. Immobilized, unable to raise the alarm quickly.

Paul got in the car and started the engine. It purred.

Slowly, slowly, he thought. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Ease out and drive away.

That was when the passenger side window exploded.

The gunman was back. In pursuit. Tooled up and shooting.

Paul pressed hard on the accelerator making the car lurch forward rapidly. He exited the garage with too much speed and couldn’t turn fast enough sending the car onto the pavement and making a couple of pedestrians under an umbrella scream as they dodged aside.

He drove fast, too fast. At the end of the street he turned left just to get out of the way. Some people were waving at him and pointing at the front of the car. Lights. He hadn’t turned the lights on. He pushed all of the buttons and accidentally found the windscreen wipers on the way to the lights.

Rear view mirror.

The Ferrari emerged from the garage. He could hear the high pitched engine of the supercar through his busted window. Paul floored it and scraped the car into a side street with less foot traffic. It was narrow, dark, possibly leading to a loading dock and a dead end.

Oh, shit... he may have trapped himself.

----- X -----

Bogdan caught sight of the BMW as it screeched into a side street. He followed too fast, struggling with traction. The gears of the car were controlled by paddles on the steering wheel and he didn’t fully comprehend how to even drive this car.

The BMW was ahead. Stopped. The driver side door was open. The red tail lights were on.

Bogdan got close in the Ferrari then stopped the vehicle. He checked his surroundings to make sure McGovern wasn’t in sight then checked the revolver, throwing away the spent shells and reloading. Six shots. Six bullets and one shot of M99. Fuck the injector, it was too risky, he stuffed it into his belt to free both hands for the revolver.

He exited the car. He never took his eyes off the BMW ahead.

It was abandoned. McGovern was on foot. He walked towards the car holding the pistol ready, seeing raindrops illuminate as they fell past the red tail lights.

Pain.

Serious sharp pain in his right kidney and his left flank.

He should never have looked at the rain in the tail lights.

McGovern had skewered him from behind. Two knives, stabbed into his lower back and left side. McGovern held onto the handles like they were the handlebars of a bicycle, a way to steer Bogdan if he wanted to. The pain in his kidney was excruciating and held him in absolute paralysis.

The knives twisted, rotating. The pain in his flank was momentary but the shock in his kidney was debilitating. It was the most ferocious pain he had ever felt in his life and it froze over his entire body.

“Drop the gun,” came the voice. It was deep, a dark and gravelled voice.

Bogdan felt sleep rushing towards him. He capitulated in an instant and allowed the gun to fall from his hands, anything to end the pain. Wooziness enveloped him. He felt the knives withdraw and immediately his legs gave way and dropped him to his knees. He felt the concrete through his clothes, felt the water of the puddles. He was going to die in this dark back street, in the rain.

The M99.

He gripped the handle of the gun still trapped in his waistband. He would fall forward and roll over, fire on McGovern. That was the plan. If he could survive another five seconds, that was his plan.

He gripped the gun, fell forward slowly, rolled over, lifted and fired straight at him.

McGovern didn’t have time to get out of the way. Instead he did something extraordinary. He swiped the pencil sized dart with a lightening fast move of the knife. Bogdan had known that vampires can dodge bullets. McGovern could cut them out of the air.

McGovern kicked the pistol away. He pulled the injector from Bogdan’s hands and tossed it aside.

Bogdan survived long enough to see McGovern return to the BMW and slowly drive away. He lay in the alley unable to move as the rain fell on his face. He stared up into the rainfall and saw a single lightning flash illuminate the sky. He began counting the seconds to the thunder. He died on the count of four.