by Drew D'Amato
“Take your best shot. You missed then in London, and you will miss now, too.”
“You were lucky. That won’t happen again.”
Peterson aimed to his right and fired. Jericho jumped to Peterson’s left against the slanted glass. (In London Jericho had dodged the bullet by moving to Peterson’s right.) Peterson re-adjusted and shot to his left, but with Jericho’s vampire speed he was already against the other glass wall to Peterson’s right. Peterson would not get off a third shot. Jericho grabbed Peterson’s right wrist with his left hand and with his right hand grabbed Peterson’s face. The two of them crashed through the window. Jericho held onto his face until they hit the ground. Peterson’s skull cracked open, blood spilled everywhere. Vlad rushed down after them. Sirens could be heard in the background.
“Jericho, we gotta get out of here.”
“Hold on.”
Jericho bent down and opened the backpack. Inside was the Dark Bible, the translation, and the Blood of the Betrayer in its silver urn Vlad had last seen when he cast it into the Dead Sea. Jericho closed the backpack, and put it over his shoulder.
“I told you I would get you the coffer,” Jericho said with a smile.
The sirens got louder.
“Awesome job Jericho. I never doubted you.”
“Even when the wall of silver bullets shot up the airport?”
“Okay, maybe a little. Now if you’re done patting yourself on the back, we gotta get out of here.”
“Hold on.”
Jericho flipped out his cell phone and dialed a number from it. Vlad heard a phone ringing from the dead body. Jericho found it in Peterson’s jean pocket and took it with him.
“Tying up loose ends. The police can track us from his call log.”
Jericho was about to step on it and destroy it when Vlad stopped him.
“Keep it. We might be able to find other Crusaders with it.”
Jericho nodded in approval and the two of them flew up into the sky. The police and the news reporters pulled up to the airport moments after they left.
They had the coffer, that part was successful; however, it was at a cost. Nevermind all of the innocent humans who died, thousands of silver bullets found at the scene only said one thing—vampires. There was no way Radu would not become wise to what had happened here.
FOUR
1
Inside the airport, the place was in an uproar. No one came out of the first floor unscathed. Even those without any injuries would be traumatized for life. At a common crime scene in Switzerland, the Cantonal police would show up. But this was at an airport. The Border Guard was there and wanted the case since they lost some men in the attack. But this event was too big for the buck to stop at the Border Guard. Fedpol (Federal Office of Police) was there. They were like Switzerland’s FBI. If a crime dealt with terrorism or organized crime, they had jurisdiction. But this event was not at just any airport, it was in Geneva—the Peace Capital. Interpol had representation there, along with MI6. News crews from all over the continent started to converge here. And none of them had any explanation for what had happened.
The microgun-armed minivan alone contributed to over forty deaths, and close to two hundred wounded. Suitcases were found inside with powerful weapons. Dead bodies were found in cars outside. It appeared from the witnesses’ statements that except for the minivan’s disregard for life, much of the conflict was between two groups of people. The men found next to the weapons had no airline tickets on them. The bodies of two men found in the Caviar House had on them tickets from a flight that arrived from London, but no tickets to any departing flight. Why then were they in the transit zone? There were also four men downstairs with tickets on them from the same London flight. A man who fell from the observation deck also had on him a ticket from that same flight.
A group of men with no tickets, and a group that came in on the same flight—was it an ambush? The airport was a mess and the reports of what had occurred where strange, but what was the strangest—even stranger than those witnesses who said some men with guns were vaporized into thin air (witnesses see crazy things during times of panic, those reports were written off)—was the poor fool’s skull who fell from the observation deck. It was obvious from the broken windows of the observation deck on the top floor that he fell from there, but his skull did not play the part of a normal fall from that height. The crack in the back of his head wasn’t that odd, but it was the other side of his face that left some questions. There was a handprint on it, like someone had pressed on his face all the way to the ground. This handprint even dented the bones of his face. How the hell was that possible?
The two top investigators for Fedpol who arrived on the scene—and took over for the Border Guard since some of the assailants were not even traveling on a plane, and this appeared to be an issue of national security—couldn’t believe the forensic scientist’s evidence. But the proof was there. They saw the five red outlines of what could be digits of a hand pressing on the face, and the indents on the frontal and zygomatic bones (the cheekbones and forehead.) It must have been done postmortem, the inspectors from Fedpol told the forensic scientist. The scientist would put that in his report, but he didn’t believe it. Neither did Inspector Bodmer or Inspector Clerc of the Federal Criminal Police—from the division of Fedpol that dealt with terrorism—but they weren’t going off the deep end just yet. Some officers of the BG that had witnessed the attack had. They were talking crazy, agreeing with some of the witnesses’ reports that the attackers had just disappeared into thin air. Clerc and Bodmer would recommend psych evaluations for these men. What they were saying sounded ridiculous to these two inspectors, but they had yet to view the surveillance tape.
Vampires were not made of any earthly matter, but a matter of preternatural existence. They have no actual elements that can be captured on film. So that meant the footage would show an army of invisible men terrorizing the airport. This, like everything else about the vampires, is both a blessing and a curse.
The Crusaders wanted that proof. Here was footage of some invisible force moving and causing damage. There were enough victims to validate the attack. The Crusaders longed for this validity. They had waited years for it.
Bandini would not pass this up. He waited for the inspectors to watch the film themselves.
They watched it with the security personel of the airport. The first attack was a bullet through the front window. They have concluded that it came from the Porsche SUV with the sniper rifle found some meters away. Next were four men grabbing machine guns out of their luggage. Then came the funny business.
A knife appeared to materialize out of nowhere and struck and killed one of the gunmen. Another guman was killed by a bullet from somewhere. Border Guards killed the other two gunmen. It looked like the threat was done, and then two more men were killed. One got a sudden hole through his chest, and the other’s neck was snapped as if by an invisible force. The image struck Clerc right in the gut. The neck bent two opposite ways without the comfort of an arm around it to hide the contorting. The body fell lifelessly to the ground. Another man was shot in the head, and then another was tripped from something invisible and this same force appeared to be holding him to the ground, as it seemed as though he was fighting to get free. That body was later discovered to have the left side of its neck ripped off.
There was a pause before a man came out of the bathroom on the northeast wall and was quickly shot dead outside. Then all hell broke loose. The windows were broken one by one and bullets mowed down people inside. There was no explanation of what stopped the shooting.
Bodmer asked to see the outside tape. It only got stranger. First, a man was pulled out of the Porsche, and held up in the air, but again by nothing. The SUV then drove off only to then explode a little down the road. The man held up in the air then fell dead. The forensics would say his neck was crushed. Nothing for a while but then came the Sharan. The door opened and bullets flew out of it. It finished its run and started to rever
se when it suddenly stopped. Seconds later the windshield broke open. Two decapitated heads flew up into the air and then fell from the sky.
“Was zur Hölle ist dieser?” Bodmer screamed in German, one of the four official languages of Switzerland. It translated into, What the hell is this? “Who has touched these videos?” he continued in German.
“No one sir, that’s the thing,” a small man behind the controls replied back in German.
“What I am looking at is impossible.”
“Put in the clip from The Caviar House,” said Eggert, the head of security at the airport.
This clip was even more inexplicable. Two men went up to an empty booth, and threw water at it. One of them stabbed the booth with a fork, another stabbed it with a knife, and then they were riddled with bullets out of nowhere. Four men then ran out of the restaurant. Those same four men were killed downstairs.
Eggert then rewound the tape and played it back at a slower speed. “Watch as soon as the knife and fork hit the seat of the booth. They disappear too.”
“This has to be some elaborate camoflauge or cloaking device that that hides the user and everything on their person from being filmed,” Clerc said not even believing it himself.
“But then why were there no bodies, not even any blood,” Eggert said. The small man without needing the order from his superior replaced the screen with footage from the top of the airport. A man is backed against the glass wall of the observation deck. He shot his gun twice and then fell through the window backwards.
Clerc and Bodmer had nothing to say.
“No one else besides those in this room have seen this tape,” Eggert said.
“Keep it that way,” Bodmer said. “And don’t tell anyone. Not even your wives.”
Clerc’s cellphone inside his jacket rang. He answered it.
“Have you seen the tapes?” Bandini asked in Italian—another of the four official languages of Switzerland.
“Who are you?” Clerc asked back, this time talking in Italian.
“Who I am isn’t relevant. What I know is.”
“And what do you know?”
“The answer to what you have seen on those tapes.”
2
A few miles away from the airport, Jericho and Vlad stood on the rooftop of a skyscraper.
“There’s nothing in his phone,’ Jericho said. “No contacts, no texts, not even any logged calls except when he texted my cell when he landed.”
“Not surprising. They probably delete everything once they use it, so that nobody can trace anything back to them. Get rid of it.”
“Well, maybe we can get some techie to find all his logs. These things are like computers, nothing is ever really deleted.”
“We have the coffer, I have no more need with the Crusaders. Besides, they obviously know that number. As long as it is working they can probably triangulate it and find our location. It’s not worth the risk.”
“Agreed.” Jericho dropped the phone and with one boot-kick smashed it to pulp. “So when are you going to teach me that two of you trick?” Jericho asked.
“That’s a first generation trick, only I can do that. Don’t feel bad, there’s not much more I can do that you can’t,” Vlad said.
The generation of a vampire in a bloodline allows them different powers. A first generation’s powers are far more than a fifth. A copy is never as good as an original, and a copy of a copy is even worse. Having two of him appears at first to be a great trick for a vampire, yet Vlad had his reasons to not do this trick all the time. When it was done there wasn’t one that was the real Vlad and one that was an illusion. They were both the real Vlad. If one of those forms got killed properly, the other half would die too, killing Vlad altogether. When he changed into the group of rats when he first met Pacami, if the bikers had put silver through the heart or burned any one of the rats, Vlad would have been killed. That trick doubled his ways of attacking and also doubled his chances of getting killed.
Another problem was that it drained his blood energy at a ridiculous level. There were two Vlads for only a few minutes and still he almost passed out. It was not that valuable of a trick. But in order to keep the Crusaders thinking they had an eye on Vlad and for Vlad to check out if it was a trap, it had to be done. It turned out to be worth the risk. It was still not the most draining of all of his tricks. The most draining would be turning into mist. Vlad always felt like he lost a little bit of himself when he did that trick. To get molecules to separate and form into practically nothing his power source drained dramatically. He rarely ever used this move.
“Why did Peterson betray us?” Vlad asked. “Did he not want to be a vampire?”
“He said he didn’t want to be our vampire. He didn’t want to be evil.”
Vlad smirked and turned his head.
“I’m going to call Malachi,” Jericho said and turned to make the call.
“I have to make a call too,” Vlad said.
They walked over to different ends of the rooftop. Jericho found out where Malachi and the rest of them ended up. Malachi was relieved to know the two of them were safe, and that they did have the coffer. Malachi told him they made it to a hotel in Milan. They didn’t bother to check-in to the hotel. They just waited on the rooftop for Vlad and Jericho. Malachi gave them the address. Jericho and Vlad would meet them there, and they would fly the rest of the night to Transylvania. Stopping for blood when they needed it, the vampires should be able to make the little over 800-mile trip by daylight, going at about 200 miles an hour. They will also have to race against the rising sun from the east.
Jericho told them they would be in Milan within an hour.
This cold wind rippled their jackets as they stood on the rooftop. Jericho hung up his phone and went to tell Vlad the info, but Vlad was still on his phone, speaking to Jasmine. Jericho decided to make another call.
“Yes, we just touched down in Ireland,” Vlad told Jasmine.
“That’s good, I miss you, when are you coming back?”
“Sooner then I expected. Maybe in a few days or so. I miss you, too.”
“Well, be safe.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You didn’t hear the news? It’s on all the channels. There was a bad terrorist attack at the Geneva Airport. Hundreds are hurt, over fifty are dead.”
“What else did they say about the attack?”
“Well they have no idea who was behind it. The people doing the shooting where white men. I guess a minivan with a Gatlin gun drove down the airport shooting the place up, that is how most of the people were hit…oh, and they found silver bullets.”
“Silver bullets?”
“Yeah I guess they were hunting werewolves,” Jasmin laughed.
Or vampires, Vlad thought.
“I’ll have to check out the news when I get to the hotel.”
“Okay Vlad, call me whenever you can.”
“I will.”
He wanted to tell her he loved her, but it is way too soon for that. Keep it cool, that’s what Malachi would say. He closed his phone and turned to Jericho. Jericho was on the phone with their pilot James.
“Yeah we heard about the chaos. We weren’t there for any of that either…yeah, good thing we landed when we did…okay I will call you in maybe a day or two but Vlad said he wants to be picked up from Munich Airport…take care James.”
Jericho hung up and looked at Vlad.
“James was out of the airport at seven. He said they are grounding everything in and out of the airport for right now. I told him to hang around Geneva for as long as he has to. It’s not a problem, we are going to make our way through Europe by land. I told him we wanted to depart from Munich.”
“Yes, it’s probably a good idea not to leave from Geneva again, someone there might remember us, and we should avoid Romanian airports too. Did you speak to Malachi?”
“Yep, they’re in Milan. I got the address.”
“Well let’s get going if we want t
o make it to Transylvania by sunrise.”
The two of them leaped up into the sky.
3
The head of security allowed them to use his office. Clerc and Bodmer wanted to maintain authority so they moved their seats behind the desk like it was theirs and Bandini sat across from them like a guest. Bandini was just outside the airport when he called them, and they allowed him to meet with them. There was no way they could not allow themselves to hear what he had to say. They spoke in Italian.
“How did you get my number?” Clerc asked.
“You’re a member of the Federal Office of Police, not some spy off the grid. It wasn’t that hard.”
“And what is your name?”
“Andolini.” Bandini never gave anyone besides the Crusaders his real name.
“Well, Mr. Andolini, what is your explanation of what happened tonight?”
“Your airport was attacked by vampires.”
“Vampires?” they both said. Clerc laughed but Bodmer was not amused.
“You’re wasting our time,” Bodmer said.
“Vampires do not record on film, that’s why there is no evidence of them. Also, silver in their hearts kill them. That is why you have recovered so many silver bullets. Am I wrong, did you not find silver bullets and the image of invisible attackers on the surviellence videoes?”
“Yes we did, but that does not mean it could not be some elaborate ruse. Maybe you have some agenda that in some way you will profit from this chaos. That is a little more believable than vampires attacking an airport.”
“More believable, but not the truth. However, I do understand your skepticism.”
Bandini took out a folder from his briefcase and put it on his desk. He decided earlier that the only way to get the surveillance footage and get these men to play ball was to give them the truth. No lie could explain what had occured, so why insult their intelligence? The truth was if these men did believe they were vanpires, they wouldn’t run to the tabloids to make money. They would be scared, real scared, and when people are scared they are much easier to control.
