by AD Starrling
The whine of an engine rose from the right. I turned and saw a black 4x4 pull out of a parking space. It crossed the heavy traffic and headed for the old man and the wounded woman running down the road.
Instinct took over. Dodging through the swarm of bodies, I ran across the sidewalk, slid over the hood of a passing car, landed on my feet in the middle of the asphalt and raised both guns. A clang of bells erupted behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. My eyes widened.
I caught a glimpse of rising panic in the eyes of the driver of the tram heading inexorably towards me and dove over the safety barrier on my right. A grunt left my lips as my hip struck the metal rail.
The 4x4 flew past me, mounted the pavement and turned right into the ‘No Entry’ zone on the Bahnhofstrasse, on the heels of the old man and woman. The crowd on the busy strip scattered, panicked shouts rising towards the sunny skies.
Bullets suddenly shattered the rear window of the vehicle and drew sparks from its bumper. It swerved sharply, its wing mirror grazing a lamp post. I looked around: Reid had emerged from another escalator and was racing after the 4x4, gun in hand. I leapt over the handrail, ran across the road and kept pace with him along the opposite pavement, blood pounding in my ears and my breaths coming in short, sharp bursts.
The running pair abruptly dove out from the pavement and narrowly missed the front bumper of the 4x4 as it weaved towards them. Another engine suddenly gunned into life behind me. I turned. My eyes widened.
A second SUV was racing up the packed avenue towards the couple. Tinted windows wound down and a pair of black clad figures leaned out of the vehicle. Muzzles glinted in the sunlight.
I felt time slow down. I skidded to a stop, leapt over a bench, rolled in the middle of the road, and rose to my feet. I dropped the Glock and lifted the Smith and Wesson in my right hand. Bullets whizzed past my head and shoulders as the Hunters fired. I closed the fingers of my left hand over the Smith and Wesson, squinted, aimed and squeezed the trigger twice.
The front right tire of the SUV blew out. The vehicle veered wildly in a squeal of burning rubber and flipped. A gasp left my lips. I threw myself to the ground. A heartbeat later, the dark shadow of the truck passed inches above me before crashing onto the asphalt several feet away. It slid on its roof in a shower of sparks and finally ground to a halt against a lamp post. I climbed to my feet, turned and rocked back on my heels as a hot gust of compressed air blasted down the avenue. The ground shook beneath me. I stumbled and leaned against the bench.
One of Reid’s bullets had pierced the petrol tank of the first 4x4. I ignored the burning wreck in the middle of the Bahnhofstrasse and scanned the crowds through the blood dripping past my eyes. I saw no signs of the old man or the woman.
There was movement beside me.
‘Whoa,’ said Reid. He stared into the muzzle of the Smith and Wesson, his hands raised defensively.
I slowly lowered the gun and fought to control the tremor in my hands.
‘I think we got most of them,’ Reid muttered, holstering the Glock. ‘On the other hand, seeing as we’re dealing with immortals here, they will likely start to pop back up like daisies in the next few minutes,’ he added with a grimace. Sirens rose in the distance. ‘What say we get the hell out of here?’
I was barely listening as I turned and stared in the direction of the train station. I started to run.
‘Hey, where’re you going?’ Reid shouted behind me.
Seconds later, I entered the main hall of the Hauptbahnhof and darted through the crowds towards the main tracks.
I found them boarding a train on the last platform. It was pulling away when I reached it. ‘Stop!’ I yelled and banged on a window.
The old man turned at the sound. His eyes visibly widened. He approached the side of the carriage and pushed the window open. ‘Don’t follow us!’ he ordered harshly.
I heard Reid call out behind me, stumbled and almost lost my footing. ‘Why are the Hunters after you?’ I shouted between gasps, struggling to keep pace with the moving train.
The old man did not reply immediately. I raced along the platform, the gap separating us widening by the second. ‘Please, for your own good, don’t come after us,’ he said finally, his words almost inaudible above the noise from the tracks. ‘I could not bear to lose both of you.’ For a second, his blue eyes glistened brightly in the light filtering through the glass atrium overhead. Then, he was gone.
Chapter Nine
Reid and I left the chaos at the Hauptbahnhof and headed swiftly back towards the Limmat Quai. The sound of sirens filled the air in the distance behind us. Several emergency vehicles raced past on the Bahnhofstrasse, flashing lights reflected in the shop windows.
The hotel receptionist’s eyes widened slightly when we entered the lobby a short time later: although I had done my best to clean the blood on my face, there was no masking the dirt stains on our suits. Our room was as we had left it. After dressing the wound on my leg and the graze on my forehead, we changed back into our clothes and checked out.
‘The cops won’t be far behind,’ Reid warned as we drove off. ‘There were CCTV cameras all over that place.’ I remained silent while I pulled into the heavy traffic: I could feel his gaze on my face. ‘So, you wanna tell me what that was about back there?’ he said finally.
I stared ahead. ‘The old man at the station was an immortal. I think he’s a Bastian.’
Reid’s eyes widened. ‘And you know this how?’ I reached inside my coat and handed him the daguerreotype. He studied the photograph for several seconds. ‘You mean he’s the one in the picture?’ he said skeptically.
‘Yes.’
A frown dawned on Reid’s face. ‘He looked like he knew you,’ he said slowly. ‘Have you two met before?’
‘No.’ I hesitated. ‘Most of the immortals who know of me are Hunters.’
Reid mulled this over for a while. ‘You think he’s one of them?’
I recalled the tears in the stranger’s eyes. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I answered truthfully.
‘What about the woman?’ he added after a pause.
I glanced at him. ‘I think she’s the little girl in the picture,’ I said quietly.
Silence followed. ‘Which would make her an immortal as well,’ Reid stated evenly. ‘Does this mean that Strauss was also an immortal, or at least aware of their existence?’ His frown deepened. ‘The Crovir Hunters are after you and this woman. Where’s the link?’
I shrugged tiredly. The same questions had been going round in my head for the last half hour. I was still nowhere near grasping the possible answers.
Reid looked up from the daguerreotype and gazed out of the window. ‘Where’re we going now, anyway?’
‘Vienna,’ I replied. A hush fell inside the car. ‘That’s where the train was heading,’ I explained at his mute stare.
‘What makes you think they’ll be there?’ said Reid skeptically. ‘They could have gotten off anywhere.’
‘There’s a large population of immortals in Vienna. It’s got safe houses where they could hide.’
Reid studied me for several seconds before pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. ‘All right, Vienna it is then,’ he muttered under his breath and struck a match.
‘Look at it this way. It’s been a while since we’ve been on a road trip,’ I said. He looked less than impressed with this statement.
We drove east along the Alps, past Munich and Salzburg, and reached our destination in the late evening.
Pronounced Wien in German, Vienna is one of the oldest cities in Europe and has been a popular settlement for immortals since Roman times, when it used to guard the frontier of the Empire against the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. It was the capital of the Holy Roman realm in the fifteenth century, and in recent years became famous for being a center of international espionage when it was occupied by the Allies following the end of the Second World War.
I had only been to Vienna once before.
Unfortunately, my visit coincided with the Ottoman Empire’s second attempt to capture the city in sixteen eighty-three, which eventually ended with the Battle of Vienna after a siege that lasted two months. It was there that I first learned how to use a pistol and suffered two of my deaths in somewhat gruesome fashions. Despite its breathtaking beauty, the place still held unpleasant memories for me.
We checked into a rundown inn in Landstrasse under our fake passports and caught up with international news in a small internet cafe around the corner. The Hauptbahnhof gunfight had already made the headlines.
‘Following the incident at the main railway station in Zurich today, which resulted in two deaths and several minor injuries, the City Police are searching for two male suspects in their late thirties to early forties who left the scene shortly after the disturbance,’ said the evening newscaster. ‘One of the victims, a female in her late twenties, has been named as Helena Baschtanhaus, a research assistant at the FGCZ, the Functional Genomics Center of the University of Zurich. Miss Baschtanhaus was killed by a single bullet wound to the head. The local police and Interpol are currently studying CCTV images from the station and from around the city close to the time of the incident. Thus far, there have been no official comments made on rumours that this event may be linked to yesterday’s brutal attack on innocent students at the CNRS campus in Gif-sur-Yvette, in France.’ The screen filled with a grainy video clip of the inside of the Hauptbahnhof. ‘Another aspect of today’s incident that is said to be baffling all involved in this investigation is the collection of images captured by the public on their camera phones. These show several men who had fallen after apparently suffering multiple fatal gunshot wounds rise again minutes later and walk out of the station. One source suggests that the men may have been wearing bulletproof vests, although this theory does nothing to explain the amount of blood found at the scene. And lastly, to add even more mystery to this already puzzling affair, a flock of crows seemed to have invaded the Hauptbahnhof minutes following the incident and disappeared just as rapidly moments later.’
‘They don’t seem to care that they’ve been caught on camera,’ said Reid after a while. ‘Are immortals really that much above the law?’
‘Yes, they are.’ I lapsed into silence, afraid that my words would betray my emotions.
Reid seemed to sense my smouldering anger nonetheless. ‘You can’t undo what’s been done,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s just try and get to the bottom of this thing before those bastards kill any more people.’
Moments later, we took the rapid transit metro into the city and got off at Schwedenplatz.
The plaza was abuzz with light and noise, the street lamps and illumination from the nearby bars and restaurants casting a bright glow on the water of the Danube nearby. Parties of revellers and office workers strolled along the pier, their voices loud in the cool night air.
I crossed the busy square and led Reid down a narrow, nondescript side street. We turned into an even smaller passageway several hundred feet from the canal’s edge. The upper tiers of the buildings on either side crowded over the dark alley, adding to the claustrophobic feel.
Halfway along the street stood one of the oldest pubs in the city. I stopped outside and stared at the oak sign above the low lintel: bar a lick of paint, it had not changed much in the last three hundred years. The hubbub of conversation inside ground to a halt when I pushed open the thick, iron plated door and stepped across the threshold.
Soft lighting painted the interior walls of the tavern in muted shadows. Behind the bar, a walrus of a man stood polishing glasses while talking softly to a pair of wizened figures hunched on low wooden stools. Through the smoke that wreathed the air and hovered in a yellow haze just below the low ceiling, dozens of pairs of eyes watched us intently.
‘Are they always this friendly?’ Reid muttered behind me as we crossed the floor to a small corner table. The low murmur of conversation started again.
‘Well, last time I was here they used to shoot first and ask questions later, so I guess it’s an improvement,’ I said wryly.
A young woman came over to take our order. ‘What will it be?’ she drawled in a bored voice, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
‘Two Stiegl, please,’ I said with a smile. The level of noise dropped fractionally so that my next words almost echoed across the room. ‘The original beer.’
The woman’s eyes narrowed at my words. ‘The original Stiegl? I’m afraid it’s no longer in production,’ she said with a disparaging sniff.
‘Really?’ My smile widened. ‘Strange. I happen to know that the owner of this bar can still get his hands on them. An old stock of some sort?’
Tense silence had fallen over the tavern. Reid shifted uneasily in his seat and placed his hand carefully on his leg, inches from the Glock. The waitress had just opened her mouth for what was likely going to be a sharp riposte, when a shadow suddenly loomed over us. I looked up into the large, bearded face of the bartender.
‘It’s okay, Maria,’ he said in heavily accented English. He waited until the disgruntled young woman left before turning to us with a grin. Several gold teeth glinted in the gloom. ‘May I help you, gentlemen?’
I studied the bartender carefully while the hubbub of conversation gradually resumed around us. ‘Like I said to the lady, we would like two bottles of the original Stiegl.’
The grin did not shift from the large man’s face. ‘I’m afraid that beer is no longer in production, sir.’
Although his tone remained pleasant, I detected the hint of wariness in his gaze. I stared at him steadily. ‘That’s strange.’
‘Oh. And what is it that you find strange, sir?’ said the bartender politely.
‘Well, I recall a substantial collection of the stuff hidden in your cellar in sixteen eighty-three.’ I paused. ‘I believe even Commander Starhemberg knew of it.’
Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg was the army commander who held Vienna with a garrison of several thousand men against the much larger and more heavily armed Ottoman army during the famous siege. In acknowledgement of his accomplishments in saving the imperial capital, Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, promoted him to field marshal and made him a Minister of State.
The bartender’s eyebrows rose by a generous fraction at the mention of the commander’s name. ‘You’re an immortal?’ he said after a short silence.
I nodded mutely. The bartender glanced at Reid. ‘He’s not,’ he stated, matter-of-fact.
‘It’s the eyes, isn’t it?’ murmured Reid. ‘There’s something about the eyes.’
The bartender grinned. ‘Oktav Grun, at your service.’ He offered his hand. I shook it and stifled a wince at his bear-like grip. ‘We don’t often see new immortals around here,’ he continued in the same light-hearted tone. ‘Why, this place is normally only full of old schlingels.’
‘Rogues,’ I translated at Reid’s puzzled frown. There were a few raucous laughs from the shadows around the tavern.
‘Maria, bring us three bottles of Stiegl!’ the bartender barked over his shoulder. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table and dragged it across the floor to ours. ‘So, you were here during the Ottoman siege?’ he said, sitting down heavily. The wood creaked in protest beneath his bulky frame.
‘Yes, I was,’ I replied with a faint smile.
Oktav nodded wisely. ‘Those were tough times.’ He rolled up the sleeve on his left arm and showed us a faint jagged scar that ran almost all the way around his biceps. ‘That was from a Turkish sabre. And this,’ he extended one leg, ‘was from the sappers during the first siege.’ The Turkish soldiers had dug extensive tunnels under the city’s walls during the Ottoman siege. These underground passages had then been filled with gunpowder mines and detonated in an attempt to destroy the extensive fortifications that had surrounded Vienna at the time.
I stared at the shallow indentation in the bartender’s calf. ‘You were here during both sieges?’ The Ottoman Empire�
�s first attempt to capture the imperial Roman capital took place in 1529, well before my birth: it lasted less than a month and subsequently became known as the Siege of Vienna.
‘For my sins,’ said the bartender with a hearty laugh.
The beers arrived. I took a careful sip of the cool liquid and closed my eyes briefly: the strong taste brought back old, long buried memories, not all of them bad. The faces of dead friends rose in my mind.
‘This is good,’ said Reid. He sounded faintly surprised.
Oktav laughed. ‘Better make the most of it. Mortals rarely get to savour this.’
The minutes ticked by slowly while Grun and I reminisced about events during the siege. Despite the bartender’s subtle questioning, I remained vague about my origins and my whereabouts following the battle. Finally, Grun leaned back in his seat and studied us thoughtfully.
‘I have a feeling you’re not just tourists passing through, my friends,’ the bartender said gruffly.
I glanced at Reid. ‘You’re right,’ I murmured.
A frown dawned on Grun’s face. ‘Why are you here, really?’
I removed the daguerreotype from my coat and carefully pushed it across the table. ‘Do you know this man?’
Grun stared at the faded picture for several seconds. ‘No,’ he finally retorted dully. He pushed the frame back towards me, his face shuttered.
‘He’s a Bastian immortal. I believe he’s in Vienna tonight,’ I said in a low voice. The bartender’s expression remained unchanged. If anything, it became even more unreadable. ‘There are Crovir Hunters after him and his companion.’ I paused. ‘I suspect he will be seeking shelter with his friends in the city.’
