She nodded and leant against his shoulder once he had sat down properly. How many more battles would they have to go through before it was finally over? Subconsciously, her hand ran to her flat stomach once more, and gave it a slight squeeze. Though she could not feel it yet, she knew that a small life, the product of the love between her and Avice, was slowly but surely forming within her.
The bus made its way out of the depot and an announcement came that they would be reaching within half an hour or so. As the bus progressed, Yarra’s apprehension grew. She stole a glance to Avice, who seemed to have his gaze fixated outside the bus. Occasionally, his skin would turn the palest of whites, and he would sniff at the air, reverting back to his usual human form when he did not want to risk any passengers screaming in fright at his pallor.
Just when Yarra thought that perhaps she had been wrong, the bus suddenly made a sharp lurch forward, the brakes squelching horribly and the screeching mechanical sound cutting through the air. It came to a thunderous stop as some of the passengers screamed in fright.
“What’s the big idea!?” a passenger shouted at the bus driver.
Yarra and Avice knew.
“Stay in here,” Avice said, standing up.
Yarra nodded as she watched him make his way towards the front of the bus. Another battle was about to begin…
*****
THE END
A FINAL GAME
Introduction
It is said that there are specific and mandatory conditions needed to make a relationship work. A couple, though thoroughly different in their individual behaviors, should share fundamental principles. It is imperative that they support each other through the best and the worst of times. And the third involves the most obvious, but hardest condition of them all – sacrifice.
The nature of precognition made life different, if not all the more difficult for Yarra. For most humans, they go through life knowing that cause will lead to effect.
It was perpetually difficult for her to ascertain the road leading to the effect, when her mind had already played out its multiple possibilities, literally. Her visions provided the destination, but not the means of getting there.
When she had first met Avice in a café across the street from their University, she had a vision that he would one day kill her. But it did not stop her from falling in love with him. It was the sacrifice of the self towards the inevitable that had made their love work. Avice ended up not killing her, as her visions had once predicted.
Yarra’s repudiation by Alicia Selleck after the war was over had come as a shock to Avice. He expected his mother to make Yarra a member of the Keepers of the Blades. To further compound the nasty shock, he was ordered to murder his girlfriend; out of fear that her powers may one day become too powerful for the vampires to control.
It led to Avice sacrificing the life he had known, and a sense of blind loyalty towards his mother and clan. Choosing Yarra Davis over blood and tradition, they had run away from the Keepers of the Blades. Alicia Selleck was predictably angry, calling for a permanent end to both of them.
It was during the lovebird’s escape that they sought after an old friend of Avice’s, Nainoru, who was also a former member of the Keepers of the Blades. Through her, they had learnt that it was not the enemy clans that had killed Yarra’s ancestor. Shockingly enough, it was Alicia Selleck who had ordered Nainoru to murder the Oracle after his assistance during the war.
With this knowledge, they had begun travelling to Great Yarmouth. During their ride to the airport, their bus was ambushed by three members of the Keepers of the Blade. Avice ordered Yarra to stay in the bus while he went out to confront them…
Chapter-1
The Confrontation
Yarra sat at the back of the bus, too distraught to move. She looked as the passengers in front of her got out of their seats, some craning their necks to see Avice standing in front of the bus, confronting the three strangers in black leather jackets. They had little idea what was going on, after all, and so there was confusion and speculations abound. She did not have to meticulously study their features to know what was going on, knowing well enough that the man in the middle of the three was their ponytailed attacker from last night. The two other tall, younger looking guys flanking him were the very same people who had once provided her security when they were still at war.
From where she sat, Yarra could see their attackers holding on to large swords – weapons that looked almost, but not quite, comically out of place in the otherwise very modern setting. They stood menacingly in front of the bus, with Avice being the barricade between them.
The bus driver honked rudely, screaming through the window for the men to get out of the way. Yarra saw many of them whipping their phones out to record the possible fight that was about to transpire.
“What the hell?” a man exclaimed. Although his phone screen was pointed at Avice and the men, it failed to capture their image properly. All that was visible was the road and trees. “How is that even possible?”
Yarra looked at the screen. True to what she had expected, phones, cameras, mirrors and other reflective surfaces were unable to capture a vampire’s profile when they were transformed.
“Look!” a woman screamed out, snapping Yarra’s attention back.
She saw her lover remove two switchblades from his pocket, making the three attackers laugh at the sight of the tiny blades.
“You think you can bring us down with that measly weapon, little boy?” the ponytailed man taunted, with a shake of his head.
Avice looked at him, thankful that the attacker was without a gun today. He sniffed the air slightly, and came to the conclusion that Mark and Domlen were also without firearms – there was none of the acrid scent of powder about them, or the oil used to keep the guns firing smoothly and polished. The air smelt faintly of leaves, and exhaust smoke from passing vehicles. The switchblade was twirled expertly between his fingers. Although the men in front of him had laughed, he knew that they were hesitant to attack. He was, after all, proficient in weapons and hand-to-hand combat.
Baring his fangs, Avice’s skin glowed an almost pale white. Behind him, he knew that the passengers in the bus would have noticed something odd – that his body just refused to be seen by their cameras and video-capturing devices. He needed to get the three attackers out of the way so then the bus would move.
Another loud, almost rude honk startled him.
“Move out of the way, idiots!” The bus driver screamed again, from his relatively safe, guarded position. “I have a schedule to keep!”
Avice bent forward, poised to attack. The slight bending of his knees made the ambushers take a step backward.
“Listen, I don’t want to hurt you guys,” Avice admitted. “It isn’t in my way to attack my clan members.”
“Former clan members,” Mark corrected sharply, seething through clenched teeth. “You ran away with that bitch, Avice.”
“You are no longer a member of the Keepers of the Blades,” Domlen added.
The ponytailed man smiled widely. “See, little Avice? This is what happens when you don’t listen to mommy. She sends us to get rid of you, and that slut.”
That did it. Avice had tried to hold back and reason with them. But he knew that if he spared their lives now, they would carry word to his mother sooner or later. The best way to deal with any possible evidence was to completely eliminate it.
Using the wind as leverage, Avice lunged forward.
Those in the bus gave out a collective gasp when they saw Avice’s body vanishing into thin air. Following that, the three men too, seem to evaporate into nothingness.
“Finally!” the bus driver said with finality. He did not seem to care about the extraordinary thing that had taken place in front of him. All he knew, was that the road was now clear. With another small crank of the gear, the bus continued to move on as though nothing had happened.
“Where did they go?”
Yarra knew.
What the passengers could not see was that a fight was happening just outside the bus, too fast for the mortal eye to follow. Yarra’s human capabilities could not catch the exact scene, but after a year of being with Avice, she had learnt to use her surroundings to see what actually was happening – or a hint of it. As the bus continued down the road, she looked to the side of the bus, overlooking a large field, and there, odd flashes formed and vanished. Some were linear, and others like a crescent or wave, swelling and vanishing into obscurity before anyone could see them in any more detail.
The clang of metals and swishes of knives, blades and swords was barely heard. She knew that Avice was fighting the three men in the field, although she did not know who was winning.
Heart thumping, she closed her eyes and focused all of her mental energy on invoking a vision. In her mind, she saw the fight going on in discernible speed.
Avice had kicked at Mark, causing the tall, white-haired man to fall onto the ground with a yell. Grabbing at his large sword, Avice twirled it in his hands with ease, not at all affected by its large hilt and disproportionate blade.
“I’m sorry… brother,” Avice said, swishing the sword towards Mark’s neck, instantly decapitating him.
Domlen gave out a yell of fury. Rushing towards Avice, he proceeded to swing his sword wildly, which Avice parried nonchalantly.
“You would kill your own clan member?” Domlen yelled out.
“It was you who said that I was a former member, remember?” Avice retorted, punching Domlen in the chest.
The man staggered backwards, stepping onto a pile of mud. For a moment, he was caught off guard, trying to remove his right foot from the congealed soil. Before he knew it, Avice had plunged the sword into his chest. No blood came oozing out from the vampire. All Domlen did was hold on to the blade embedded deep into his chest, as he coughed and let out a leer.
“Alicia will kill you for this. She will torture that slut and make you watch,” Domlen said with grim satisfaction, before falling to the ground in a silent heap.
Avice looked at the bodies of his former clan members. All that remained was the ponytailed man who now had a look of fear in his eyes. It was clear that he was just a messenger, and was not exactly trained in the art of battle. His legs shook as he tried to stand his ground against Avice, despite what he had just witnessed.
“M… mercy, Avice, please.”
The last thing Yarra saw in her vision was Avice rushing towards the man in breakneck speed. And then all was gone after that.
Yarra kept her eyes closed as the vision evaporated away in her mind. She did not flinch when a cold, clammy hand gripped at her wrist. When she opened her eyes, Avice was sitting next to her with a subdued look on his face.
“H… how did you get in?” Yarra whispered sharply, looking at the other passengers. None of them had noticed nor even cared that Avice had somehow rematerialized within a moving bus.
“You do know that we can fly and move through partially permeable objects, don’t you?” He smiled, pointing at a small crack in the window just two seats away.
Yarra gave out a small laugh. Vampires were gifted with different abilities, each unique to the individual; very rare was it for one to have all possible. For Avice, he was blessed with the power of flight, combat, healing factors, and relative invisibility. He could also render his skin fully permeable to lightwaves, making him invisible in the process.
“You killed them,” Yarra said in a matter of fact tone. She glanced at his clothes. Other than the slight dampness of his shirt from sweat, there was nothing else to show that he had been embroiled in a fight for his life. There was a small nick to his wrist which was healing at a superhuman rate. She watched interestedly as the skin stitched itself back up as though with an invisible needle and thread.
“I had to,” Avice said, massaging his temples. “If I didn’t, they would have informed mother of our destination.”
Though the tone of his voice did not betray the sadness in his heart, Yarra knew that Avice regretted killing his former clan members. It was not ingrained within him to use violence, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“I’m sorry you had to do that,” Yarra offered. Though a part of her was ecstatic at the length that Avice would go to protect her, there was a faint, pervading guilt within her too. It was because of her, that Avice was deemed a traitor to his clan.
Avice did not reply, choosing instead to rest his head on her shoulder as the bus moved towards the airport.
Chapter-2
Escape
Unfortunately for them, the airport was also littered with members of the Keepers of the Blade. Having to rely heavily on their disguises, Avice pulled down his beanie hat as far as it would go to cover his now long locks of rusted hair as they carried the simple luggage with them given by Nainoru. Yarra pulled the scarf closer around her neck.
“No Scent Sensors around here,” Avice mouthed to her discreetly. He was referring to the vampires who had the ability to smell a particular person’s scent from over a mile away. Having killed one of them, Avice was struck by an idea. He had pilfered the ambushers’ personal belongings which were now on him and Yarra.
Yarra reluctantly wore Mark’s wristwatch, and Avice had on Domlen’s beanie. The amalgamation of one’s scent with another could help throw their pursuers off for a little bit.
The couple walked within a large group of people, which helped to keep their scent diluted. Even if there were Scent Sensors around the airport, they would have had a hard time trying to triangulate the couple’s exact position.
“Look,” Avice pointed out discreetly through his overcoat.
Just fifty feet away was the unmistakable sight of Alicia Selleck, walking through the crowd with her husband, Jared. The jaw on Avice’s face tightened at the sight of his parents. She was unsure of how he would react, but she needn’t have worried for he just continued walking in the opposite direction.
Alicia and Jared were moving around the airport floor with a nonchalant pretense, looking around the place as visitors to a new town might. Occasionally, a man or woman would approach Alicia to say a few words to her before walking away. Yarra knew that these were her subordinates, reporting to her at very specific intervals.
“I’m quite surprised that mom is here. Domlen and Mark would have probably warned her of our arrival before they ambushed us earlier.”
Yarra could only nod, too nervous to speak. So far, none of the Keepers of the Blade had seen through their simple disguises. With a little bit of makeup from Nainoru, Yarra had to admit that she looked different. The shadows accentuating her cheekbones made her look slightly older than she really was.
Avice was a completely different person with the beanie on his head, that was failing to cover his long, rusty hair.
Holding on to his hand, she let him lead her to the lower floor of the airport, away from the departure lane. An odd sensation rose within her. How were they to travel to England without plane tickets and passports? As they moved with a smaller crowd, Yarra could see a couple of eyes looking in their direction.
“Shit, they have Scent Sensors in this part of the airport,” he said, still keeping themselves adhered to a group of twenty or so people who were part of a tour. None of them seemed to neither mind or care that two strangers were following their group. By the sound of their accents, they seemed to be from Eastern Europe, though he could not say for sure.
Yarra looked up. Leaning against the metal railing one floor above them, was a vampire who she knew was third-in-command to Alicia, a young woman by the name of Tess. She too, had pale skin, though for her, it made her look more haunting than it did deathly. Her cheeks were lightly rouged, and her lips were delicately painted with a subtle tinge of red. She looked unassuming. Which was the point.
Twice, she felt Tess’ eyes wash upon her, paired with a raising of one fine eyebrow. She prayed that her scent would be masked within the group.
“Avice,” Ya
rra mouthed as they continued walking. “I think the lady above suspects something.”
Her love gave the slightest of nods and went straight into action. Reaching into the luggage bag, he pulled out one of Yarra’s old college shirts, along with a pair of his briefs – he had prepared for such an event. They retained a scent of its owner, having been worn countless times. Without anyone noticing but his mate, he wedged the articles of clothing in a stranger’s luggage.
The man was too busy pointing out something to his friends to notice what Avice had done. With a quick maneuver, he grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her apart from the group, walking into another group of people who were gabbing away excitedly in Chinese as they passed at the right time. The ruse worked. Tess continued to pay the group of Eastern Europeans more attention, and had not noticed that Avice and Yarra had somehow slipped away.
In Love with the Enemy (A Rizer Wolfpack Series Book 4) Page 41
