The Nightlife Moscow

by Travis Luedke

  Mancave #2.

  Then something moved by the bed, and the squishy sound stopped.

  He silently handed off Lana to Kristina and drew both swords. Something was standing in the deeper shadows in that room, and Aaron had a suspicion he knew exactly what it was – a wounded vampire.

  * * * *

  Chapter 17

  A series of clicks sounded off from the wall at the bar and Aaron stopped dead in his tracks to peer through the darkness in the direction of the noise. He could see nothing but the shape of the bar and liquor bottles lining the wall. Then a bunch of little red laser lights speared through the darkness to find their mark. Two lasers hit Aaron’s chest. He had a split second to notice Kristina had a laser on her chest too, and then he decided.

  The monster would have to wait. In a blinding flash of speed he dropped both swords and hit Kristina head on, nailing her and Lana against the wall and out of the immediate line of fire. As the girls squealed from the unexpected impact, Ivan and Katya both yelled, “Get down!”

  The echoing rattle of automatic weapons fire was followed by screams of pain. It was all Aaron could do to get the girls down on the ground. Panic surged through him as he screamed from a bullet slashing through his right thigh. He scrambled desperately to pull the girls to the cover of the dining table and chairs. Still in shock, the pain hadn’t come on yet, but he knew it would hit soon enough.

  Strange flashes of golden light illuminated the room like a disco strobe. Aaron bobbed his head up off the floor to see Urvashi centered within the flickering energy of her protective aura-shield. The staccato gunfire striking her shield caused little sparks of light. She moved twenty feet in an instant and struck the bar in blur of flashing blade and telekinetic power. Each of her whip-crack sword strikes blasted away huge sections of the bar. The explosive force penetrated through to the soldiers hidden behind the partition. Sounds of mutilated flesh and men dying filled the air as Urvashi demolished hardwood and marble countertops to get to the soldiers trapped on the other side.

  She worked her way down the bar with sweeping up-down strokes of her sword, hacking-blasting-smashing through anything in her path, an Angel of Death using a katana as a bulldozer.

  It was the most amazing and disturbing thing Aaron had ever witnessed.

  Though her attack only lasted a few seconds, throughout Urvashi’s reign of hellfire and fury, Aaron caught several more distinct snapshot glimpses that painted a clear picture of the angular jawlines and cheek bones of a reptilian female creature beneath the human façade. Urvashi was not even remotely human, had never been human, and Aaron began to wonder if such a thing had ever been born on the planet earth.

  A nasty sensation crept up Aaron’s spine and he looked towards the archway. Bastard Dmitri stood there watching them all with a grin that wasn’t quite … happy. He looked constipated, or perhaps a predator baring its teeth in menace. Aaron looked down to Kristina and Lana who were hugging each other, crying and shaking. He wanted to do something more for them. Killing Dmitri was the only thing that would solve their problems.

  Aaron stood up on his shaky right leg and tested his weight. His leg held, though it was starting to burn like a bitch. Dmitri sized him up in a minute, and dismissed him to focus on Urvashi who was making her way out of the wreckage and death at her feet. Aaron reached for his swords and found empty scabbards.

  Fuck.

  They were on the floor where he’d dropped them. He eyed Dmitri once more, and caught him tracking Aaron’s gaze over to the blades. Shit.

  They both went for the nearest blade. Aaron reached one a split second before Dmitri slashed at his head. Aaron rolled out of the way and escaped with a deep gash on his temple, but with his head still attached. He scrambled to his feet, sword at the ready and parried a flurry of hacks from Dmitri. The fucker was fast, strong, and relentless. Aaron backpedaled, blocking Dmitri’s blows non-stop – left, right, high, low, left, right, up from the bottom, down from the top and a straight stab.

  Dmitri reached too far with his stab and left himself over extended. Aaron spun as he side-stepped and ripped a quick slash across Dmitri’s chest. The vampire staggered back in a roar of pain and fury, and suddenly landed atop Aaron with a vicious right cross.

  Aaron’s jaw crunched as his head snapped around and he landed several feet back on his ass. He suddenly understood what people meant when they talked about seeing stars. His vision was nothing but flashes and a blur of tears as waves of pain exploded across his jaw and skull.

  He had a moment of clarity to see Dmitri standing over him, sword held high, already in the middle of a lethal downward stroke. Then Urvashi was there. Her sword flashed in front of Aaron to deflect Dmitri’s killing blow. The surge of her power flowed over Aaron like a warm breeze, but hit Dmitri like a Mack truck. The vampire’s head snapped back and he flipped end over end in the air and smacked the floor face-first. The force of his landing cracked the ceramic tiles.

  “Oh shit, that looks like it hurt.” Though Aaron could hardly move his jaw without pain, he grinned wildly. His master had turned the tables and saved his life, exactly as promised. Dmitri was fucked.

  Standing over her conquest with her sword raised, she pitched forward and cried out as gunfire erupted from a new troop of disposable soldiers coming down the stairwell. Several bullets hit her and she staggered. Her aura-shield formed an instant later, almost reflexively, sending the rest of the shots ricocheting off her power.

  Two soldiers broke off from the group and focused their rifles on Aaron. As they fired, he was already up and moving. Too slow, one bullet seared into his shoulder and sent him spinning through the air to land on his back. He lay there, breathing hard, trying to focus past the stabbing-throbbing-burning agony in his leg and shoulder. By comparison, the sledgehammer headache Dmitri had given him wasn’t so bad. One soldier approached cautiously, rifle pointed at Aaron’s head. Aaron groped around for his lost sword and saw it resting several feet away on the floor. Though he knew he had to do something right away, he couldn’t force his fuzzy mind to focus past the pain.

  A loud growl split the air and the bloody wreck that was Ivan regained his feet and tossed his rifle aside. He’d obviously taken several bullets, but his ferocity was a palpable force in the room. Then Ivan’s face began to contort, elongate. A massive snout emerged and his lips peeled back away to reveal inhumanly large, sharp teeth. His eyes blazed golden, and he held his hands in front of him as they reformed into some sort of clawed appendages.

  The soldiers panicked and called to one another in Russian. Ivan became the sole focus of their rifles. The wolfish man staggered as several rounds hit his chest, but he held his footing. The beast was still wearing body armor.

  Ivan’s howl cut through the room, a baleful sound of animal rage. In a blink, Ivan leapt atop the soldier standing in front of Aaron, cutting through the man with nothing but teeth and claws. The soldier’s rifle fell to the floor as Ivan shredded flesh with a viciousness only seen in the animal kingdom. The Russian hadn’t even bothered to finish his transformation to wolf. He was an abomination, something in between man and wolf – and far more savage than either.

  In seconds Ivan had chewed the man’s face off, skinned his skull, flung the flesh aside and crushed his cranium in the power of his massive jaws. Aaron managed to scramble back out of the way of the gory corpse that Ivan tossed aside.

  With Ivan’s freak show distraction, Urvashi had a chance to recover and move in for attack. In three seconds flat she downed four men, almost cutting one soldier in half. The last four soldiers scattered to escape her lightning strike sword. Two sprinted up the stairs, cursing all the way. The other two got as far from Ivan and Urvashi as they could. They took opposite sides of the room, tripping over furniture and bodies in the darkness. Urvashi lit into the backside of one runner, and Ivan loped in the opposite direction after the other one. By the time Urvashi finished slicing and dicing her man, Ivan had the last soldier’s face in his ma
ssive jaws, pawing through his belly, gutting him as his jaws shook their prize so hard the wolf broke the man’s neck.

  Ivan dropped the dead body from his teeth and scanned the room looking for new prey. His grotesque head turned back and forth in indecision. Aaron whispered a prayer to the powers that be as Ivan’s inhuman eyes settled on him. Please, God, let this creature recognize me. He hoped the intelligence inside the monster was still fundamentally Ivan. A movement on the floor drew Ivan’s attention. Dmitri had woken up. The Ivan-wolf-thing went straight for the downed vampire in a dead run, a wolfish grin on its chops. A century of vendetta was about to get paid in full.

  Aaron scooted back to lean up against the side of the couch, trying to get past the pain. He wanted to shut his eyes and rest, but, there was no way to stop watching what was about to happen. Ivan jerked Dmitri off the floor with a solid chomp on his left shoulder. He stood with the man in his chops, Dmitri screaming in agony, thrashing about.

  The vampire still had some fight left in him. He cut a wicked right hook into the side of Ivan’s snout and tore the wolf loose from his bite. The monster stumbled back several steps, shook his head with a groaning growl of pain, then flexed its man-wolf claws and barked in Dmitri’s face. The vampire hissed and retreated until his back hit the wall.

  In a flash the wolf hit him, pinning Dmitri to the wall, and his mouth descended on the vampire’s face. At the last second Dmitri cursed hard in Russian and used his formidable strength to choke Ivan, shoving him back by his throat. Ivan’s claws raked through Dmitri’s upper body and the vampire went down with the savage blows. Ivan was on his prey, relentlessly biting, clawing, snapping and growling, an animalistic ferociousness Aaron never imagined the old man possessed.

  Suddenly a woman rushed out the archway from the bedroom with a pistol in hand. She could have been a Russian supermodel if not for the blood crusted on her throat, which had dribbled down onto her expensive white blouse.

  It clicked then, the feeding noises. Dmitri had been charging up on blood in the bedroom when they first walked into the room. The woman screamed shrill threats in Russian and started shooting at Ivan’s back. The creature howled in pain and thrashed. It was the opening Dmitri needed.

  The vampire rolled over atop Ivan and started pummeling the beast into a bloody pulp. Aaron knew too well the power behind those fists, and poor Ivan was taking it repeatedly.

  Urvashi flitted past and literally disarmed the woman with one swipe of her great sword. The shooter’s gun fell to the floor, along with both her disembodied hands, as blood sprayed from the stubs of her arms. Screaming in shock the woman looked at Urvashi in horror and the fallen angel finished the job with a blurred flick of her blade. The woman’s head toppled over sideways and hit the floor before her shaking corpse could join it. A few seconds later the headless body flopped over atop its missing parts.

  Dmitri stood up over Ivan, his hands covered in gore, knuckles shredded to the bone. The son-of-a-bitch was hard as nails. Shot, stabbed, clawed, bitten, sliced, diced, pounded and pummeled, Aaron marveled at the fact the vampire was still alive, let alone standing. Ivan was laid out, his breath a gargle coming from his bloodied and broken face. Aaron doubted the old wolf would live much longer.

  Heaving to catch his breath, the vampire faced his nemesis, Urvashi. “Was it worth it? Your ridiculous crusade?”

  She dropped her sword low, and slowly glided the blade out to the side, seemingly relaxed. Aaron sensed the deadly coil of tension in his master, and he was glad to be far out of her reach.

  “I told you to cease creating that abomination in your laboratory. When you released the serum on the streets of Moscow, I warned you to give me the drug and destroy the formula before someone else could replicate it. When you refused, I told you I would stop you at any cost. Your foolishness has brought us to this moment.”

  She raised her sword high, in preparation for the killing blow.

  From behind her came three women in blood splattered t-shirts and blouses, tears running down their faces. They were terrified, must have been hiding in the back bedroom all this time. The blonde in front spoke in stutters. “Please, I beg you, do not kill him. You condemn us all.” Her English bore a heavy Slavic accent, obviously a second language.

  She stepped forward into Urvashi’s kill zone, either brave as hell or extremely desperate. The woman dropped to her knees and tugged on the pant leg of Urvashi’s black combat gear. “If Dmitri is gone, we will have no one. We will die or go insane. Please have mercy. If not for him, for us.”

  The women were shaking, bawling. Aaron read the intensity of their need plainly in their minds. The other two wanted to join the blonde begging for Dmitri’s life, but were immobilized by their fear.

  Bloodslaves.

  “Holy fuck.” Aaron was stupefied.

  His master was unperturbed. “Your fate will be determined later.” Urvashi dismissed their pleas, just like that. “As for Dmitri, his life is forfeit.” Her sword flashed without warning and Dmitri’s head flopped backwards off his shoulders and his body slumped over beside the unconscious beast that once was Ivan.

  As the life left Dmitri’s body, Aaron felt a psychic whiplash of power from the dead vampire, like rubber bands pulled tight, then snapped back. All three women flopped to the floor, holding their heads and screaming in agony. Aaron could almost feel their pain as Dmitri’s psychic bloodslave bond was ripped from their minds.

  A few seconds later all three women blacked out.

  * * * *

  Chapter 18

  Aaron finally closed his eyes and lay back against the couch. Blessed rest. No one blew anything up, no one shot at him, and no one tried to cut his head off. His overlapping aches and pains began to recede as he floated on a haze of exhaustion. Then a bastard fallen angel found the light switch and ruined his peace.

  He sensed her standing before him, and slid an eye open – the one that didn’t hurt. Her aura glowed intensely as she went down on one knee and touched his torn shoulder. As her power flowed down into his body, he caught another flashing glimpse of her alien-inhuman face. Though unsettling, the benevolent concern she showed him came as a welcome comfort. In seconds his pain drifted away under Urvashi’s magical touch.

  She truly was his angel, fallen or otherwise. When she let go of him, she visibly sagged, her aura far weaker, and for the first time ever, he saw her wince in pain at her own injuries. How fascinating. The great Urvashi wasn’t indestructible after all.

  Her breath came labored, as if she had finished a heavy workout. “Healing takes a lot out of me. Though you are weak, and I’d rather not burden you further, I must ask for blood in return.”

  Aaron nodded and held out his right wrist. “It’s the least I can do.”

  She smiled at him. Damn, the woman looked tired. He’d never seen her look so … human, frail. The battle and injuries had drained her bigtime. Baring sharp little fangs, she bit down hard on his wrist and sucked from him for a couple minutes. He could feel the drain on both his blood and aura, but she’d given him so much of herself, it felt like he got the better end of the deal.

  Looking refreshed, she licked his wrist once and then cleaned the rest of her meal off her lips. She stood up and turned her attention to Ivan.

  Aaron cringed at the sight of the man-beast he had considered a friend. Urvashi kneeled at his side, and touched the gore of his broken face with her fingertips. The woman looked sad, damn near crying. Aaron had never realized that his master might actually have some emotional attachment to these wolves. Her power flowed through Ivan, but it was different this time. Aaron felt her forcing her will onto him.

  She wasn’t healing him.

  Suddenly Ivan’s body started vibrating, quivering. Like flipping a switch, he changed under Urvashi’s hand. The man-beast reformed into a wolf, and a blood-curdling howl of pain echoed off the walls of the room. She stood up quickly and the wolf whined and nipped at her hand, then slipped free of the shreds of Ivan�
��s clothing and body armor before backing away on shaky legs. The creature was in pain, but, the bloody wreck of a man-beast was completely gone. This clean, new wolf padded over to the corner of the room and settled down on its haunches with a slight whine. It watched Urvashi and Aaron, for a moment, then promptly closed its eyes and fell asleep.

  “Well isn’t that fucking convenient.” For the first time ever, Aaron envied the wolves for their ability to shake off just about anything. All they had to do was change.

  Urvashi found Katya lying on the floor on the other side of the dining table and kneeled down to touch her forehead. Oh shit. Katya. Michelle. Aaron fought past the pain and exhaustion to scramble to his feet. Limping and cursing all the way, he found Michelle face-down on the floor on the other side of the couch.

  “Oh God, please no…” He fell to his knees in front of her, praying that her nine lives still had one chance left. He rolled her over gently. Her beautiful blonde hair was matted with blood from a scalp wound, and the black fabric of her torn combat suit was soaked in blood. He bit into his right wrist and shoved it up against Michelle’s mouth. “Come on! Drink!”

  He flowed down into her mind and found her there, unconscious, but still alive. She was extremely weak, needed blood right now. “Michelle, wake up! Feed!”

  She wasn’t taking it, no response.

  Aaron looked around frantically and his eyes settled on a downed soldier three feet away. Ignoring the pain in his leg, shoulder, and everywhere else, he leapt up and snagged the soldier and dragged him over to Michelle. One hard chomp and he opened the guy’s wrist and shoved it against Michelle’s mouth.

  Nothing happened.

  Aaron squeezed and kneaded the man’s arm and worked it like a sponge. The blood gushed out into Michelle’s open mouth, and she sputtered, almost choking on the syrupy fluid. Finally, she slurped up the blood and when he shoved the broken skin against her lips, she bit down.