He had aimed for its head.
Shane stared transfixed on its rent limb. While the things in the hallway and the room watched in shocked disbelief, Boone leaped to his feet faster than he should have been able to. He grabbed the wounded, smoldering beast by its shirtfront and pitched himself and Shane out the window.
Shane screamed all the way down.
There was a crash from outside as they hit the ground.
“Now that…” The dark Lord Rainford looked upon Shane’s severed arm, which was smoking in the light of the corridor. “I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years…”
Kreshnik roared and stalked off down the hallway for the stairs.
Boone’s major worry on the fall was that his guts might burst out of his stomach on impact. He managed to get the arm with the revolver around his belly before they smacked into the sidewalk below.
The injured vampire hit the ground first, somewhat cushioning Boone’s landing. Boone bounced off Shane and rolled away, shaken, but his stomach was holding up.
Shane immediately began to shriek and sizzle, lying there on its back, palms upraised and elbows drawn into its sides, caught in what sunlight remained from the late afternoon.
“Burn fucker.” Boone managed to stand. There were things watching them from the shadows in the window three stories above. He extended his arm and fired the Smith & Wesson, the bullet going wild, his arm jerking up a foot. On a good day the recoil from the .529 was hard to manage.
The screeching thing on the ground was smoldering and dollops of itself were dripping off to puddle and smoke on the sidewalk.
Boone ignored its immolation and cries and faltered towards the street. His head swam and his midsection throbbed. He couldn’t explain how his stomach had healed like that…how he had survived the drop from the window…how he had made it this far…He stumbled and nearly went down, but righted himself and lurched into the street.
There was a crash behind him as the door to the warehouse was thrown open. Boone was already turning to face whatever came out of it when a bullet punched through his back and spun him around, his blood showering into the street.
A slave had burst from the doorway and fired on him with an Uzi.
Boone fired the Smith & Wesson from his hip, the round missing its mark and blowing a hole in the side of the warehouse, but forcing the man down.
Boone’s thigh erupted in a gout of blood and he pitched onto his back in the street. He saw muzzle flashes from the third floor windows. Bullets pocked the street around him as he fired the remaining rounds from the Smith & Wesson into the dark above.
He popped the cylinder and dumped the empty shells. Boone found a speed loader on his belt and struggled to fit it to the cylinder.
The mostly liquefied remains of Shane were giving off black smoke and a strangled, anguished cry.
They were no longer firing on him. When he looked to the warehouse entrance he saw why.
Kreshnik had emerged from the dark. It looked down on the puddle that had been Shane and then over to Boone. The evening was upon them but the last light of day raised fumes from its head and shoulders.
“Oh great.”
The Albanian strode across the sidewalk towards Boone. It marched purposefully, seemingly unconcerned that it was smoking.
Boone returned his attention to the revolver in his hands. He was having difficulty aligning the shells with the cylinder.
As it crossed the sidewalk and into the street, Kreshnik tugged with one hand at the gloved fingers of its other, removing the leather glove, extending and contracting its clawed hand.
“Yeah.” Boone triumphed as the shells slipped home. He twisted the speed loader and let it drop, snapping the cylinder closed with a flick of his wrist, extending his arm, the tall vampire looming over him, leering, its bared hand drawing back—
The BMW crashed into the Kreshnik, knocking it thirty feet down the street where it lay unmoving.
“Boone!”
Hamilton popped out of the driver’s door and turned towards the warehouse. Half a dozen muzzle flashes winked as the unseen opened up on him. As bullets pinged off the hood and roof of the sedan, the Mac-10 in Hamilton’s hands let rip with what sounded like a sustained cough, a jet of flame bursting from the end of the suppressor.
There was a scream from the third floor windows and in a couple of seconds the Mac-10 had burned through a thirty round box magazine.
Kreshnik drew its knees up to its body and raised its head.
Boone crawled towards the car on his elbows, aware that he was bleeding all over the street from the wound in his thigh, wondering what the hole in his back looked like.
Hamilton had reloaded and fired the contents of a second mag through the windows. He swapped magazines and hustled over to Boone.
Kreshnik sat up.
“Boone, come on!”
Hamilton scooped Boone up under the shoulders and heaved—Christ the guy was heavy. Boone swung an arm around Hamilton’s shoulders and hopped on his good leg to the car.
Kreshnik’s clawed hand reached out and took its boonie hat from the asphalt.
The slave on the street fired on them and Hamilton and Boone fired back together. Boone’s .44 rounds went wide, but a sustained burst from the Ingram zippered the guy from balls to breastbone, the barrel of the Mac-10 rising slightly as Hamilton fired it in one hand.
“In the car.” Hamilton pushed Boone into the backseat. No sooner had Boone rolled over onto his back, than the car lurched forward and darted up the street. As Hamilton took the corner, Boone looked back to see Kreshnik, smoking, rise to its full height.
“What the fuck happened back there, Boone?” Hamilton demanded.
“Give me your belt…” Boone managed weakly.
“Where’s Madison?”
“He’s gone.”
“Shit.” Hamilton was shocked. “What happened to Gossitch and Bowie?”
“They’re gone.” Boone looped the belt around his thigh, above the bullet wound, cinching it as tight as he could.
“Gone…” the word trailed off Hamilton’s lips. He looked into the rear view mirror. It would be completely dark soon. The vampires would be out, hunting them. Boone was in the backseat of his car, bleeding like a stuck pig.
Boone popped the cylinder of the .529 and thumbed a single shell into the empty chamber.
“Something’s going on, Ham…”
“Yeah, you’re goddamn right, Boone. We were set up man. All of us!”
“Yeah, no, that’s not what I mean…” Boone was feeble. He was having difficulty finding the words. “They disemboweled me man. I saw my own guts…I was holding myself together…”
Hamilton raised his eyes to look at Boone in the back seat. The man had lost a lot of blood. Had to be in shock. He was probably going to die if they didn’t get him some help fast.
“Ham…”
“What is it, Boone?”
“The other night, did you and Madison take those women home?”
“What? Yeah.”
“They really nuns?”
“They’re freaks, Boone. That’s what they are.”
Boone moaned.
“Listen to me, Boone.” Hamilton took his eyes off the road long enough to turn and face the wounded man in the rear. “It’s Jay—that bitch he’s been spending all his time with—”
Hamilton turned his attention back to the road—“Oh shit!”—but it was too late. He hadn’t been paying attention and shot through a red light at an intersection just as another car rolled through.
The BMW slammed into the Toyota Corolla at nearly forty miles an hour. Hamilton’s body snapped forward but the seat belt he wore slammed him back. Pitched from the rear, Boone hurtled over the front seats, through the windshield and past the hood of the Toyota.
When Boone regained consciousness he was on his back. His head felt like it had cracked open. He reached up and found it had.
People were gathered on the corner and
stared, pointing at the accident. Steam poured out from under the hood of the Toyota they’d rammed. The front of the BMW was accordianed, the windshield blown out.
Boone sat up and there was a tinkling as glass from the windshield dropped from his body to the asphalt.
“Look at that guy!” Someone on the corner called out but no one made a move to come near the vehicles.
It was dark out. Night time.
Like a drunk man, Boone staggered to the BMW. Hamilton was slumped in the front seat against the air bag. His face was a mask of blood. Boone opened the rear door and searched the floorboards until he found the Smith & Wesson. He holstered the .44 and reeled back onto the street.
The night. Cops would be coming. Blood suckers too.
Something stirred in the car they’d hit. Boone eyed it warily until he spied the Mac-10 caught in the folds of their BMW’s hood. He retrieved the Ingram and pulled back the bolt. A single round ejected from the submachine gun and clinked on the street.
“…dude’s got a machine gun! Shit—look out!”
Boone gripped the Mac-10 by its suppressor and fired on the other car. A zig zag of bullets punched through the door panels as shell casings streamed out the side of the weapon. When the bolt locked open on an empty chamber Boone extended the Ingram and aimed it at the car. No one was moving inside the Corolla. His arm wavered and he lowered it to his side, turning and wobbling down the street.
The people on the corner were all gone.
Boone let the Mac-10 go, the weapon clattering on the ground. He couldn’t put his weight on his shot leg without it feeling like the limb would go out on him. He had to get out of the street before they came. Boone tottered half a block before collapsing in the street.
He felt around for the Smith & Wesson but couldn’t find it. Funny, he knew he was wearing it on his body. Boone looked up into the black night and then the black was a part of him and he knew nothing but it.
He dreamed of angels, seraphim consumed in flame, creatures at once terrible and wondrous. Their ministrations were ameliorative, their touch the very caress of beneficence. He dreamed of a beach littered with bleached bone, of a sun dripping crimson in the sky. He dreamed of a monstrous creature full of tooth and claw, feathers and mayhem. He dreamed of Gossitch.
“From what I understand…”
Boone’s eyes fluttered and opened.
“You are a very lucky man to still be here.”
Dickie Nicolie sat next to the bed, one leg crossed over the other. He wore his pristine white sneakers and a red track suit. His crucifix on its chain. He had a wooden box of some kind on his lap.
“A very lucky man indeed.”
Boone felt incredibly weak, as if his body had been through a wringer. The room they were in was cool and clean, bare save for the bed, the chair the mobster sat in, and a medical gurney next to the bed.
“You understand me?” Dickie leaned forward in his chair and peered into Boone’s eyes. “You can understand what I’m saying to you? Good.” He sat back where he was. “Listen carefully, and do your best to remember what I say.
“That car you crashed into and then shot up? The man driving it was an innocent. He was on his way home from work, on his way home to his family. That’s on you.” Dickie stabbed his finger at Boone. “That’s always gonna be on you.”
Boone remembered getting up off the street, blasting the shit out of the Corolla.
“Fortunately for you, the car you drove was clean. The police can’t trace it to you.”
Boone mustered his strength to ask. “I can’t drive…what about Hamilton?”
“Who?”
“Hamilton…he was driving.”
Dickie looked like he was concerned that Boone really understood anything they were talking about. “They found you two blocks from the accident. There was one body at the scene. His name was Kenny Kessel. He was going home to his family. You should know his name. And you shouldn’t forget it.”
Dickie sat there looking at the big, muscular guy in the bed. He considered what he was going to say next before he said it. “We are, you and I, fortunately, in a position to help one another.”
Boone looked at him.
“I’m not here because I particularly like you,” admitted the crime boss. “I’m here out of respect for the man you knew as Gossitch. Personally, I never understood what he saw in you. But it’s enough that he did, I suppose. I respect that. Frank…Gossitch was a good judge of character and potential. But I digress.”
“What happened to Gossitch?” Boone rasped. “He wasn’t there…”
“The women who found you also found this at the warehouse.” Dickie held the wooden box in his lap up for Boone to see. “There was nothing else. A lot of blood, bullet holes in the walls. Three empty coffins, but that was it.”
“What’s in the…?” Boone nodded to the box.
Dickie leaned forward again and unclasped the hinges that held the lid of the wooden box in place. He lifted the lid and Boone closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were still there, two human hands, cut off above the wrists, resting on red velvet. A white gold wedding band adorned the ring finger of the left hand. Boone knew whose hands they were without asking.
“This is all they found.” Dickie closed the lid and placed the box under the folding chair he sat on. He sat back and considered Boone again. “You look super pissed. And that’s good. See, I have some information you might find enlightening.
“But first this. Your friend, Jay?” Images of feathers and Moore cigarettes flashed in Boone’s head. “That woman he’s been…with? She’s a fury, a monster. Your friend, Jay, has been dating her and fucking her and she’s been killing my associates. And—your friend, Jay? He’s been helping her.”
“How…” Boone’s question trailed off.
“You’re surprised, maybe, that I know and accept her ‘otherworldly’ nature. Kid, this thing I’m a part of, we survive by keeping a low profile. How many times do people say, ‘There is no Mafia.’ How many times have we ourselves said, ‘There is no Mafia?’ So, it’s really not difficult for me to believe there are other things out there, things long denied. Things most people don’t understand, things they’ve shuttered their intellects against the very possibility of.”
Dickie folded his hands in his lap and tapped the index finger of one hand against the knuckles of another.
“Woman or monster, her ultimate nature is no concern of mine. What does concern me is the fact that, in the last few weeks, she’s killed a couple dozen people and cost my family millions of dollars. And killed isn’t strong enough a word for what she did.”
Boone figured there must have been more murders while he was recovering. He wanted to know how long he’d ++been out of it but instead asked, “You’re gonna kill her, then?”
“Well, actually,” Dickie stopped tapping his index finger, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What about Jay?”
“What do you think?” Dickie held up a pager he took from his red track pants. “Your friend, and his paramour, fled the country last week. They’re in Europe. We don’t know where, yet. But when we do, we’ll call you. On this.”
The mobster lay the pager on the bed.
“Now, in return for the favor you will do us, we’re gonna do one for you.”
“A favor for me, huh?”
“The man you knew as Santa Anna? He set you up. He set your friends up. It’s because of him that Frank is dead. He was turned in prison. He’s…” Dickie looked like he was either going to spit or choke on the words he was trying to say. “His blood feeds those fucks that killed your friend.”
“He’s a slave?”
“Like all others, by his own choice. When they flipped him in prison, he could have defied them. He could have chosen death. Instead, he chose life. But that life he chose was compromised. And the consequences of his decision had ramifications for you and your friends.”
“Motherfucker. I�
��ll kill him.”
“No.” Dickie waved his finger in the air between them. “You won’t.”
“Fuckin’ why not?”
“What’d I tell you? You been listenin’ to me?” Dickie looked angry. “Frank was my friend too. Remember that.” He stretched out his arm and squinted at the Movado on his wrist. “I gotta get going.”
Dickie stood, leaving the box with Gossitch’s hands under the chair.
“I’m going away for awhile.” Dickie sounded resigned. “In the future, you need to contact me? You won’t, but if you do, it’ll be through one of my associates, yeah?”
Boone could think of no reason he might ever have for needing to contact the wise guy.
“Yeah, sure.”
“One of my associates will call you when we have a location on your friend and that thing.”
“Hey. Wait… you said Jay left the states last week? I seen Jay Wednesday night. What time is it?”
“It’s a quarter past four in the afternoon .”
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“I’ve been out for two days. Shit.”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“They tell me you’ve been out for a week. It’s Sunday September 6th.”
“Fuck.”
Boone was going to ask who had found him, but when Dickie opened the door to leave the room, Isabella looked into the room on him. A cat rubbed itself on the doorframe.
“Rest now.” She closed the door, leaving Boone alone.
He didn’t feel well, but he felt like he was getting better. He thought of Jay and his girlfriend and thought that was some bullshit and he couldn’t care less about a bunch of guineas or their friends getting killed. When he thought about Santa Anna and Kreshnik and the old vampire fuck, he felt his blood pressure rise. He was going to get them, every last one of them.
He had to take his mind off it. For the time being he was in no condition. Boone looked over at the box on the floor, the box with Gossitch’s hands. It didn’t help.
I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) Page 26
