Behind the attacking creature, a car fired into life, headlights snatching away what little darkness remained in the confined street.
Fabio threw open his door and dropped into the seat. He jammed the keys into the ignition, thanking God that the car started with the first turn. Tires squealed as he spun the car from its parking spot, the door slamming shut under the increasing momentum. He shot a glance into the rearview mirror, looked long enough to see the car slow down and the transforming monstrosity throw itself through an open window. The trailing vehicle sped up again.
“They really want you bad,” Fabio said.
The woman said nothing, but offered a scared whimper and glanced over her shoulder through the rear window. Her shorts had ridden up her thighs, the material tight in her crotch. Fabio jerked his eyesight to the road ahead.
Ignoring the one-way regulations, Fabio accelerated the vehicle towards Termini railway station and swung the Fiat left onto via Giovanni Giolitti.
Colored lights bounced across the surrounding street and reflected off the station’s external wall. The piercing whine of police alarms screamed through the air.
Fabio swung the old Fiat to a halt at the edge of the road, killed the engine and cut the lights, hoping the police hadn’t seen him.
“What the hell are you doing?” the woman screamed.
He ignored her and stared into the rearview mirror.
Four Alfa Romeo’s raced past.
The threatening vehicle, still pursuing Fabio’s rusted Fiat, shot from the junction at breakneck speed and slammed into the lead police car.
The collision spun both vehicles and sprinkled shattered glass across the blacktop. A spark of fire erupted from one of the cracked engines, and a monstrous occupant tumbled onto the road like a flailing crash-test dummy. Blaring horns split the night.
The other police cars screeched to a frantic halt, the cops piling out to aid the injured, inspect the damage.
Fabio started the engine and gassed the Fiat quietly from its parking place.
He swung a left onto Via Cavour, accelerated once the police were out of sight, and hooked another left towards Via Merulana before he said anything. “My name is Fabio.”
He held concentration on the road ahead but noticed her glance in his direction.
“I’m Deanna.”
“I know; you said so at the hostel. What are those things chasing you?”
“Hybrids.” She turned to face the front and visibly slumped into the tatty seat. “So what are you running from; vampires?”
She didn’t even try to hide the hint of sarcasm in her voice. Fabio nodded. “Yes.”
Her expression held a touch of disbelief for a moment but it passed quickly.
“So, what are these hybrids?” Fabio queried. “Half vampire, half. . . What?”
“Half werewolf.” She sighed. “Apparently, it’s a long story.”
Vampires; werewolves; an amalgamation of the two—until twelve months ago he would have scoffed at the thought but now Fabio believed everything.
For a while they drove in a silence punctured by the distant sound of emergency service sirens wailing across the city. Thankfully the early morning traffic remained sparse. The day had broken, Rome’s horizon brightened by shafts of brilliant sunlight as if God Himself threw divine light upon the capital of the Catholic world.
The impressive basilica di San Giovanni, the cathedral of Rome and resting place of six former popes, loomed ahead of them. The Lateran Obelisk rose from the square, its cross stretching towards the fresh morning sky.
Fabio turned right, headed the car along Via Druso, and checked the rear view mirror. At the moment they weren’t being followed, yet he still didn’t allow himself the opportunity to breathe easy. Parco degli Scipioni flashed past on their left; a vast expanse of greenery. He noticed more of the city on this short ride than he’d ever done before, doubtful he’d ever see it again.
“Where are we going?” Deanna questioned.
“Fiumicino airport. I think it’s time I left this country; what about you?”
She nodded and although an inescapable fear simmered in her expression, Fabio realized just how beautiful she was. Another time and place, a whole different scenario, and he might have found himself falling for her.
He kept the speed up along Via Cristoforo Colombo as the traffic around them began to thicken. Maneuvering the car onto an exit ramp and then joining Viadotta della Magliana, the center of Rome fell away behind them. The sense of claustrophobia at fearing he would die seemed to dissipate with the metropolis. Road signs indicated they were approaching the airport, and a new sensation of uncertainty welled in the pit of his stomach.
The pale body of an airplane climbed into the brightening sky, morning sunshine flashing off its windows. Not once had Fabio ever considered leaving the country of his birth, yet he wished he was sitting on that plane making his escape. A cramp of sadness wormed through the dread and he promised himself he’d return to these shores at the first opportunity.
He feared that prospect would always remain a dream, and that all that lay ahead of him was a horrifying nightmare.
SIX
Santi Quattro Coronati
Rome, Italy
The broadband connection loaded the web page in less than two seconds. Anton guessed the computer’s cache file must be filled with information from this site. He wondered how many times Markus had sat here and gazed through the details and images of his daughter’s autopsy; how often he must have punished himself by looking at these gruesome pages.
Anton himself didn’t know if he could stomach perusing the internet site, but felt he had to in order to get a feel for the atypical prey the coven had now placed under bounty.
Last night’s attempt at bringing the damned mortal to justice had failed. Dante lay in a hospital infirmary, his skull fractured, the internal bleeding thankfully stemmed. Two vampire Enforcers were there now, dressed as police officers, trying to gain his immediate release. The infernal human had not only managed to run from his hometown before being apprehended, but now he’d also eluded one of the coven’s more superior vampires. Anton prayed to the Elders that the man would not be so lucky a third time.
With a clenched fist to his mouth and eternal sorrow tearing at his heart, Anton gazed at the web page.
Anatomia di un vampiro.
The words stained the top of the site in bold red font. Anton almost expected the letters to drip blood. Using smaller font beneath the main heading, the words were translated into English: Anatomy of a vampire. Centralized over a black background was a full length photograph of Gabriella laid flat on a steel dissection table, her body covered by a white sheet. A British flag and an Italian flag were located under the picture, giving the user a choice of two languages.
Anton shifted nervously in his seat, took a sip of cooling water, and clicked on the Italian version.
The dark background remained but the image changed to a full length one of the princess devoid of the covering sheet, her naked flesh exposed to the world. Although at one time he coveted a view of her unclothed form, he never wanted it to be like this. The picture had been taken looking at her left side, dark hair dragged up and away from her face, exposing her neck and the savage laceration disfiguring her throat.
Seeing the wound again pulled horrendous memories from the dark of his subconscious and bathed them in a light as bright as the one streaming through the hotel window on that summer day last year. Anton sat uncomfortably in the eighteenth century baroque chair, gazing at the computer monitor, and relived the anguish of entering the room expecting to see a slain mortal only to find the horrendous visage of Markus’s precious daughter clinging to the last threads of life.
He blinked to sever his gaze from the brutal image, and a tear glided down his cheek.
A menu tree stretched down the left hand side of the web page and Anton glanced at the first heading. Autopsia risultati. He clicked on the banner and the connection downloaded the inf
ormation.
The first paragraph detailed Gabriella’s vital statistics and a series of photographs loaded in sequence, each picture painting a graphic story. The princess’s chest protruded upward, a body block under her spine causing her arms and head to fall back, the position immediately drawing attention to the fullness of her breasts. Her body was already tainted with a deep Y-shaped incision, the flesh peeled back. In each case, a subsequent picture portrayed the next stage in procedure; the chest cavity opened exposing her internal organs, the appendages removed in one large block. Diagrams complemented color photos of Gabriella’s heart, lungs, stomach and intestines.
Nausea bubbled in Anton’s gullet, anger churning at the unbearable desecration of one of his own: someone he had loved.
When he scrolled down far enough to see the first picture detailing the brain examination, he clicked on the ‘back’ button, not wishing to see any more.
Anton pushed away from the desk and grabbed the glass of water. He needed a break, time to get his emotions in check and his anguish under some form of control. He felt like rushing to the nearest hospital and draining the blood of the first doctor he saw, if only to exact the tiniest thread of retribution. He crossed the carpeted floor to a water dispenser.
The library was deserted, his presence almost insignificant in the immense room. Rectangular with high, arched ceilings, the library stretched along the length of Santi Quattro Coronati’s west wing, each end of the room graced with twenty-foot high vaulted double doors. Countless volumes of hand-crafted books detailing the multiple centuries of vampire history adorned rows upon rows of polished, oak bookshelves. Intricately crafted murals decorated the room’s marble walls, the frescoes depicting many of the coven’s most notable successes during their eternal conflict. Late morning sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows located high in the walls, the shafts of natural luminescence providing most of the lighting. Four colossal marble statues dominated each corner of the room: the sculptured effigies of the coven’s foremost Elders. Tapestries hung behind each figurine displaying the personal coat of arms of each former warlord. Ten individual desks stood in a row down the center of the room; a computer, writing block, and items of stationary ordered meticulously on each.
Anton paused at the dispenser and downed what little liquid remained in the glass. The consumption of blood gave vampires strength, vitality, and essential sustenance, but they couldn’t survive on that alone. Like a mortal human a vampire’s body is about sixty percent water and a sufficient intake is needed every day. They were not animals like those untamed lycanthropes who considered raw meat a delicacy, and Markus insisted on arranging lavish banquettes whenever the mood struck him. Anton himself was particularly fond of a slab of well-done steak. He might be undead, but his taste buds still worked.
Anton filled the glass, air bubbling loudly in the dispenser. He drank half the water, and refilled the glass.
He was almost back at the desk when his cell phone burst into life, its chime echoing through the tranquil library with all the vulgarity of a werewolf’s howl on a windless night.
Anton gathered up the phone and glanced at the display. A bolt of expectation surged through him; he hoped the caller had good news. Anton connected the call. “Ciao.”
“Anton; it’s Xavier.”
The vampire on the other end of the connection had seldom been to Italy and although Xavier had mastered a number of different languages, Italian wasn’t one of them. Given that the roots of the coven were steeped in Italian history, Anton hoped every vampire would have felt obliged to speak his native tongue—he made a mental note to address this issue the next time Markus held a collective counsel. It mattered not; Anton spoke fluent English with an American accent.
“Good afternoon, Xavier, I trust all is well with you?”
“It is, my good friend.”
“Magnifico. Do you have any news for me?”
“Yes I do. The flight landed here in Bucharest about an hour ago.”
“And. . .?”
“They weren’t on it.”
Anton’s smile contained resignation but no pleasure. “You’re sure?”
“Of course. As you know we have official contacts and they didn’t even board at your end. In fact, their names were called in Rome three times before the doors were sealed and the plane was allowed to leave.”
“Grazie, Xavier. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
“Thanks; you too.”
Anton cleared the call and leaned back in the seat. Just because they hadn’t caught the flight to Romania didn’t mean they were still in the city and that worried Anton the most. It would have been easy, and perhaps wise, for them to have purchased tickets with credit cards to one location, then paid cash for alternative airfare and flown somewhere totally different. Leonardo da Vinci airport serviced all of Europe, and connecting flights could take them anywhere in the world. Ciampino posed a similar problem: they might have bought the tickets to Bucharest at Leonardo, and then travelled to Rome’s secondary airport and caught a flight from there.
The fact their target traveled with a companion had come as unexpected news but it didn’t pose a problem.
He had no idea who the woman was or if she had any connection with the autopsy on Gabriella, but in the end it didn’t matter—if she was with the medical examiner when they found him, she would die too.
Anton took another sip of water, and the unfortunate picture of Gabriella’s naked form pulled his gaze back to the computer. Scanning the menu list once more, the final heading gave him reason for curiosity. Vittime di un vampiro.
“Victims of a vampire,” he muttered. Anton’s index finger hovered over the mouse for a moment, and then he clicked on the link.
The old man’s face stared at him again, only this time the fluorescent lighting of a morgue illuminated the elderly features and not the glow of a lantern. A flash of electrical stimuli rippled through him as he gazed at the man’s frozen expression, the same look he’d given the moment Anton lunged forward and pierced his throat. That feed, his first nourishment for twelve long months, had been a supercharged moment. Blood had never tasted so good.
A numbing sense of realization slowly swallowed Anton as he tapped the page down key and found the attractive face of the middle aged woman he’d encountered south of Bologna. She’d struggled against his attack, he remembered, her heart beating fast with panic, making her spilled blood flow thicker.
The puncture wound he’d made in each neck was highlighted and described in detail.
His first two feeds since being fortuitously dragged from the lagoon; the first two vampire victims detailed on the web site. The cursed mortal followed me to Rome!
Anton hit the page down key, disappointed not to see the prostitute’s face fill the monitor. Had they not found her yet? He’d encountered her two nights ago, surely someone had stumbled across her drained corpse. Or maybe the medical examiner had simply lost the scent once he hit the city limits.
Anton had unwittingly brought the man here—to the endless beating heart of a coven in search of justice. He smiled, reached out, and picked up a manila folder from the desk’s mahogany surface. He opened the front flap, and a photograph from the hospital records where the man had worked filled the first page in the file.
Fabio Morani.
“We’ll find you,” he whispered in Italian, “and we have an eternity in which to do so.”
SEVEN
TGI Friday’s,
Karl Johans Gate,
Oslo, Norway
The waiter placed a cup of cappuccino in front of them both then deposited the bill on a saucer in the middle of their table. He gathered up the emptied dessert bowls and returned to the kitchen.
She picked up the mug with both hands and took a sip. It tasted good, the liquid warming her.
He glanced at the brown froth in his, at the sprinkling of chocolate powder across its surface, and pulled a face.
Deanna smiled. “I guess
it’s not the same as back home.”
Fabio looked up but the grin failed to mask his unhappiness. “No, it’s not.”
A twinge of guilt molded her stomach. She’d inadvertently reminded him about Rome, a place they’d escaped from only six hours previously. She’d become used to running now, but for all she knew this could be his first time outside of Italy.
They hadn’t talked much at the airport, not enough to get to know each other. Their discussions consisted of ideas thrown together about how best to leave the country undetected. They’d purchased tickets to Bucharest using their credit cards, then paid cash for seats on a KLM flight to Amsterdam-Schiphol that had departed a little before six that morning. She’d dozed on the plane; he hadn’t slept at all. Deanna questioned them taking another KLM flight, but Fabio insisted, and an hour and ten minutes later they’d sat in separate seats on a two hour journey to Norway. She hadn’t found sleep at all on that trip and neither had Fabio.
Deanna stared across the table at his weathered face, bloodshot eyes ringed by purple tiredness. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in about two weeks.
“Maybe we should check into a hotel tonight,” she suggested. “Sleep on a comfortable bed for a change.”
Four nights in Rome had taken its toll on her, and last night in the hostel had been the first time she’d stayed indoors since arriving in the city. The summer sun didn’t shine as powerfully in Oslo as it did in Rome, and she figured the nights would be colder here. Glancing out of the window she noticed a bank of dark gray clouds showing their swollen bellies above buildings on the other side of Stortingsgata. She wasn’t familiar with the city, but if memory served Oslo Fjord lay in that direction. Cool air blowing off the sea must be building up the atmosphere’s precipitation. She didn’t fancy sleeping outside if it rained.
“I don’t know if checking into a hotel is all that wise,” Fabio said.
“We don’t need to use our real names. They can’t trace us if we just use cash.”
Monsters and Mortals - Blood War Trilogy Book II Page 7
