The pins locking the steel door crackled open in haste and Claire entered the basement.
“Shit,” Claire said as she pushed the door closed. The door could not be locked from this side and she had no way to barricade it. Nothing around the basement except crumbling iron and wood. I watched her take a long knife from her belt, wedge it at the top of the door, and shove a second knife at the bottom. She pushed the daggers smoothly until the cross-guards pressed against the metal door and stone wall.
Outside vocal sounds crossed between fighting cats and battling raccoons that physically slammed blows like grizzlies. Swords tapped and rang at such speed that it sounded like raindrops on a metal roof in a torrential downpour, impossible to pick one or another stroke from the onslaught. Claire crossed the room and stood behind me looking at the door. The glint of a sword hung silently near the chair leg. I realized both the grave danger and a hoped for rescue that twined into a single bundle of growing fear.
“Where’s your hood?”
“Someone forgot to put it back on.” It lay on the floor next to me.
“I think you figured how to get your hood off by yourself. But that’s good. He’ll see your eyes when you die.”
I stiffened involuntarily. But I also thrilled at the hope. Someone came to rescue me. Silence from the other side of the door. Then the door shuddered. Vampire strong punches dimpled the steel panel and flexed the portal but the wedges held. A solid boot kick folded the door open. Garin stood in the doorway like a hero painting of old ringed in an ancient picture frame. Smoke, dust, and mold swirled around him like a fog. His torso hard and covered in a blood drenched black t-shirt with the two Katana swords from his bedroom mantle. I wanted him badly in more ways than rescuing me. How did that idea flood my mind? At a time like this? My heart skipped a beat in a moment of joy.
Claire’s sword lifted and crossed inches from my neck, bringing back the fear. “Nice to see you Garin. You look hot. Angry yes, but hot.”
“Step away from Anna,” Garin demanded.
“Now Garin, you must know you can’t have her.”
“You have the agreed upon lab equipment. We met your group’s demands. You need to give Anna back.”
“But now you killed my friends. That’s renegotiating the agreement.”
“You aren’t the lead negotiator.”
“That’s right. I’m only along for the excitement.”
“I never took you for a scientist.”
“I’m not.”
“None of you are scientists.”
“No. Did the lack of white lab coats give us away?”
“Who is the lead negotiator?”
“You killed her.”
“So you’re done with this group then?”
“Done? Unlikely.”
“We’re a mercenary group hired to take the project to the next level. The militia and the terror cells filled an early need for tools. We’re part of phase two and now prepping phase three.”
“Then where are the leaders for this project?”
“That would be fun to know wouldn’t it?”
Garin moved toward them, “Tell me who.”
“Garin, you don’t have a negotiating platform here. I have your girlfriend. We have the equipment successfully delivered.”
“Drop your sword and back away.” Garin demanded.
Claire lifted a foot and kicked the rotting timber holding the basement up. The post easily fractured in its lousy state and fell away in a puffy debris cloud. The wood floor groaned over our heads. Sand, mold, and dead bug carcasses shook down as the joists flexed in a sudden loss of support. The joists splintered and folded.
Garin rushed a pair of paces forward and held the joists on top of his fists clenched around his sword grips.
“You make quite a good post,” Claire purred, “that’s what I liked about you.” Claire grabbed the rope that tied my waist against the back of the chair and dragged me deeper into the basement. “Did Garin tell you we have a history?”
“Claire, you don’t need to tell that.”
“I think Anna should know. Way before you Anna, I was Garin’s first. And his fifth. And his tenth. Garin has always come back to me after failing with other girls.”
“– Claire!” The floor shrugged off more debris.
Claire leaned down, keeping her eyes locked on Garin, to whisper in my ear, “I was his first and his rebound girl. How do you think we so quickly came together after you broke your relationship with him?”
I hadn’t considered any of that. “He could do what he wanted.”
“Brave little girl,” Claire said. I saw her sword tip rise and fall in little wavers. Not the icy rigid strength of a vampire that could hold such a thing perfectly unmoving for days. She seemed scared! Or maybe she held Garin in her feelings as strongly as I? Had Claire become wrapped in him? Or still lying and manipulating? But I knew she used me as her pawn – and I could be quickly expendable – more fear clawed at my brain. She dragged my chair further into the basement. Garin followed moving first one fist and then the second along the joists while holding the floor up. The flexing as he moved forward put tremors through the flooring and other joists. Trash rained down as the wood considered cracking and falling in additional places. Claire lowered the sword and tightened her arm around the rope as well as the chair.
“Good bye Garin.” Claire leaped directly upwards. Her fist parted the rotting floors and walls then up through the mossy roof. We floated above the house as our upward arc slowed. Then we fell. Claire landed next to the house after flipping me above her head like catching me in a chair from a circus spring board. I couldn’t get my breath before Claire ran into the woods.
Garin blasted through the house and landed near the garage. Claire moved into the shadows and sliced through the bonds that held me to my chair. She deftly sheathed her sword as she ran with me savagely squeezed under her arm like a rag doll jumping forward over rocks and fallen trees deeper into the wood. The forest blotted my blurry view. Frighteningly fast movement into the forest punctuated with furious spitting guttural growls cast by an angry hunted animal.
-:- Thirty-One -:-
The buzz of a bullet flitted through the underbrush followed closely by the sound of the charge from a pistol among the trees. Another chunk of lead spinning like a football burst through the air inches from me. So close, I saw its line strike through a sapling and spiral into the shaggy bark of a hickory tree. The bark crackled like thick dry paper. Maybe I became used to Claire’s rapid pace. Maybe I dreamed. A second shot buzzed like an infuriated hornet but stopped wetly near me. The bullet burrowed into Claire’s shoulder of her arm holding me. Her grip lessened for a heartbeat but she hoisted me back up and lengthened her stride. A rivulet of blood coursed down the muscles wrapping under her shoulder blade, soaking the black jumpsuit. Most likely my blood escaping her undead flesh. The hole healed and expunged the mushroomed slug. Alerted, or maybe caring more now, Claire seemed to hear the approaching bullets and moved enough so any shots kept missing her. The bullets did not come from behind where Garin raced to catch us.
Light filtered sparsely through the forest canopy in splashes of amber-greens bursting across patches of small struggling saplings or wide swaths of Northern ferns. Obliquely I saw something moving toward us, a flash of light and shadow through the pooling light let through by the tree branches. The attack line aimed somewhere ahead of Claire but narrowed the distance between us. Claire changed her track and dove into a ravine. Tree trunks flanked the depression filled with sharp edged boulders shattered from a fall at great height as if they rode the mile high glaciers that covered this part of the country and fell here in one dramatic splintering plunge when the glaciers receded. Claire zigzagged between and over the jagged rocks. She swung my head, arms, or legs out dangerously avoiding slicing me against their notched saber edges. Buzzing bullets warbled about the air yet continued missing us.
Where did Claire run? She must know she cann
ot escape two other vampires. But if she can escape long enough to rendezvous with others from her group then the situation changes. I saw the shadow flit from the side. It stayed along the top of the ravine and followed parallel to Claire’s course. I closed my eyes to freeze the image allowing my mind to catch up to the speed. I recognized Branoc with something on his back. I tried again and saw Brett! He lived!
But how long would I live? I ached from the rough pace of Claire’s handling. I knew I needed to do something to survive. Before she engaged other vampires friendly to her. But it seemed she ran in excess of seventy miles an hour. Reaching to grab a tree branch could shred my hands or break my arms.
The pistol shots ended suspiciously as if Branoc’s gun had emptied.
My bouncing head in this wind made it hard to focus. The empty Katana scabbard slapped at Claire’s side. She held her Katana in her free hand. The matching Wakizashi sword grip hung deliciously within reach. How could I grab it? I would have to draw the blade. Did I have the arm length, clutched as I was like a carrion prize, to draw it fully from its sheath? Would I be fast enough to get it out before she slapped me with her fist or her sword? She still hung onto that sword so the blade dripped down and back from her hand. Good for punching and not being hung up in the underbrush as she ran, yet still give a shield if attacked by another sword.
What would I do with the sword when I had it? I couldn’t reach her neck. Freeing my body from her arm would be the best but my body hung over the edges of anything I’d want to slice and I’d as much kill myself getting to her. That only left the two pumping legs below me. A blur of black tights. Like pushing a stick into whirring machine gears. Potentially explosive. Assured unpredictability. If I failed, she wouldn’t hesitate in killing me. Her escape would be easier without me and my death provided easy vengeance on Garin. If I did free myself then this reckless velocity would be like being flung from a speeding Buick. Among trees. And rocks.
But if Claire reached more of her group then both Garin and Brett would perish besides me.
Could I do it?
Could I do it fast enough?
Could I live, or die, with the consequences?
The ravine lifted up and the rocks ended. Here the trees stood farther apart with much stouter trunks – a swath of forest that missed the last forest fires or logging operations. Fewer saplings or other vegetation littered their feet. Claire’s stride increased and we accelerated. She swerved around the trunks putting barriers between her and Branoc and Garin who I guessed – I hoped – still ran somewhere near. I couldn’t see them from my position under Claire’s arm to know how close or far they followed and grasped at faith. My breathing rate increased. I bent myself and pulled with both hands at the Wakizashi handle. I used my weight and the wind force to draw the blade down and dip it between those meshing knees and pumping legs. I held it firm but the legs ran hard. The edge cut across the back of one knee. The other knee hit the dull rear edge of the blade kicking my hands free. The strip of steel spun on its own. Circling the cut leg further and flying out sideways, lost under the dead leaves.
Claire fell.
I tumbled, flipped, and spun through the underbrush rolling up the rough roots of an ancient choke cherry tree forcibly gripping the world. My back slammed hard into the trunk and I lost my breath. I slid down as hazy gauze draped across my vision. I couldn’t breathe. The harsh tree roots spilled me on the ground. My head faced Claire’s crash path and my eyes remained opened registering the images but nothing in my mind could process anything. I could not move. I lay still as if bolted to the forest floor by rude wrenches.
Claire recovered from her bowling roll that scored the woods like a plane crash. She reached out and clawed at the wood of a tree to stop herself. She sheathed her Katana to free her other hand and scrambled up the tree. Her mostly severed lower leg dangled loosely, held by a ribbon of bloody flesh and cartilage still strung to her knee. It wiggled like the quick break of a fishing lure as she climbed the tree. Claire stopped at a dizzying height. She hung by one hand and gripped the sword in another to let her knee recover.
Two flashes whipped passed me. They didn’t see me since I lay behind the roots and I couldn’t call to them. My heart clenched hard in my chest. The pulse pushed. My skin and body expanded slightly from that pump. Then a second ragged beat squeezed forth in some kind of life but I still couldn’t move.
Branoc dropped Brett to the ground. Garin leaped higher than I had ever remembered but Claire remained above his reach. Branoc tried as well but neither could reach Claire. She growled. It reminded me of how a cousin’s hunting dogs worried a raccoon in a tree. Our flashlights cut across the dusk revealing glowing angry raccoon eyes.
Claire healed rapidly. My blood must be strong. For her.
Brett looked around. His eyes searched the ferns, rotting fallen branches, and sprawling leaves. “Anna!” Then he saw me. He ran back, “Anna, are you alright?”
I moaned. Breathing came in short painful gasps.
Garin growled, “Claire, come down. We can talk.”
“Oh, I’ll be down shortly.” She said, shortly holding her sword in one hand. She shifted around so her good knee bent putting her foot solidly flat against the tree trunk. Her hand held the tree behind her back. Like I remembered practicing the crab walk in elementary gym class but with a weapon that would have never passed the school’s no tolerance policy.
“Anna,” Brett touched me and lifted at my body. But as rapidly, he let me go, “dammit, I shouldn’t have moved you.” He looked about my body and then ran his hands from my scalp to my shoulders and arms and my thighs to my feet. I winced in several places as his fingers touched me carefully. His hands probed those areas more thoroughly. “Bruises. Nasty bruises but nothing broken on your arms or legs.” He came back to my neck and touched carefully along it to my collar bone and then the front and sides of my chest. I screamed when he touched my ribs. They seemed like door hinges and pressed against my heart. Pain came sharply with each breath deeper than a shallow pant. “Shit!” Brett lifted my shirt and touched my quivering abdomen. His focus remained intense searching for why my skin looked more yellowed here. I moaned in shooting pain and convulsed which only hinged my ribs again like squeezing a basket made of dry twigs.
“Garin! Anna’s injured!”
Claire’s voice came clear with wickedness, “Yes Garin, you better go tend to the girl. I can see from here she’s bleeding internally. I’ll even give you a few moments of truce to say goodbye to her.”
Branoc growled, “Claire! –”
Claire shrugged, “Her own doing.”
Garin’s fists flexed open and closed. His boots trampled the leaves as his head moved back and forth between Claire and me in mental anguish that pulled at the balance between rescue and revenge. His movements revealed he knew he could have one or the other but not both.
“Keep an eye on Claire,” Garin needlessly ordered Branoc. He shoved Brett back and knelt heavily at my side. He bit his fangs into his wrist and brought his blood over to drip across my lips and drizzle onto my tongue. Ripping and shredding bark rent the forest silence.
Branoc warned, “Garin!”
Brett’s face went slack. He struggled to kick his feet and push with his hands to move away. At the last moment, his eyes still riveted to the air, his fingers found my ankle and he dragged me back away from Garin and the coming shadow. Claire’s body rocketed at Garin like a missile. Her Katana held crosswise splitting the wind. Her face twisted up tight into a free flowing shock of hair and fangs. Coal-like points burned from her eyes followed by a dire swooping body. Garin jumped away into the air flipping and drawing his swords.
Claire’s fists hit the leaf blanketed forest floor and she rolled forward finishing with an acrobatic flourish that spun up vertically consuming the remaining motion and landed her solidly on her feet, “Russian Ballet.”
“Long?” Garin snarled.
“Half a century taught me about being limber
.”
“I’m sure it did.”
They flashed together and their swords rang with the speed of steel castanets. Branoc joined them with his sword. Claire beat back both Garin and Branoc with such speed neither Brett nor I could watch what happened inside that blurring ball. The dried leaves spun into the air around their writhing motions. Saplings bent toward their tempest. A tornado twisting with four foot steel scalpels.
“Are you getting better?” Brett asked, his eyes riveted to the flashing swords.
I pushed my hands on the leaves. Amazed I had control again. And sat partially up, “I – I think so.” I touched my stomach and the pain continued receding while its awful tint changed colors in the light filtering between the tree leaves from high above. Old trees that cared not for the battle spinning around their ancient feet holding the ground so tight they soared into a canopy seventy feet above. I thought and sucked air abruptly. These trees could be two hundred or maybe the largest three hundred. Claire almost doubled their age. She reached back before Shakespeare penned Romeo and Juliet when the Capulets and everyone else openly carried and fought with swords. She must have seen Shakespeare’s productions while he personally observed and edited the performances. A shiver ran up my spine but it could be the vampire blood. I hugged Brett, his body warm and comforting.
His arms encircled me and he whispered into my ear, “Let’s go while they are distracted.” I nodded. He pulled me to my feet. His dark green eyes searched mine. I tested my legs and they became stronger and surer. We slipped around the black trunk that had so harshly caught my body. I stared at the gnarled bumps, angular roots, and the splashes of disturbed scales where my body had rubbed against it. Like gawking at a car crash on the freeway. Brett’s hand slid down my arm, latched onto my hand, and pulled me away from the tree and the vampires. We couldn’t add to the fight but this we could do. We could run away but we also knew the awful reality we could never get far enough. The sounds of the vampires receded into the noisy chipmunks and birds announcing our passage. The sun filtered through the imperfect dusk below the tree tops.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #1 & #2) Page 34
