“I hadn’t used my cards since I left Mestre and they tracked me down.”
No answer came to her. She sometimes feared government agencies could find out every minor detail about a person, but it seemed the supernatural world had the ability to find anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Deanna looked over her shoulder once more and studied the other patrons in the building. A man and woman, probably in their early twenties, sat two tables away, leaning close and talking to each other in hushed tones. The man had some shopping bags trapped between his feet and the couple looked to have taken a break from shopping to grab some lunch. Deanna wished her and Fabio could blend in so easily. A group of four young men occupied a table close to the main entrance, and five bottles of beer stood on the table. One of them checked their watch and glanced out of the window at a sunlit boulevard populated with shoppers. Whoever they waited for was obviously running late. Sitting alone near the window, a pretty blonde woman picked at a bowl of salad while waiting for her main course. There didn’t seem to be anybody else inside, but the tables on the sidewalk were beginning to fill up, consumers taking advantage of the warm weather to grab a bite to eat before the clouds left their station above the fjord and rolled into town.
She shifted her gaze back to Fabio. He took a sip of cappuccino, grimaced, and placed the cup back on its saucer. During lunch he had talked in a hushed tone about the last year of his life. He explained about his autopsy on a dead vampire, his web site, and death threats made by supposed fictional monsters. His trek across Italy following in the wake of a vampire in an effort to obtain proof of their existence had left her in doubt as to whether she should consider him brave or stupid.
It had backfired on him to a degree now, though. He hadn’t obtained notoriety or fame for his discovery, but instead walked into a world he’d not been prepared for and one that would surely end his life. She remembered feeling such emotions in the hours after discovering her butchered parents; wishing she hadn’t gone home that night, that she hadn’t even made the trip from England. She could have remained oblivious about the existence of this horrific world they found themselves in. If she’d been told her Mom and Dad were murdered by thieves breaking into their home she could have accepted it and moved on with her life. To know a vampire-werewolf hybrid had slain them still resounded in her brain with a degree of unbelievability.
She wished the nightmares that came to her often during the darkest spell of night could morph into a realm of familiarity and harmony.
She sighed and wondered once again what they were going to do in order to stay one step ahead of their pursuers. “What do you suggest we do then, Fabio?”
He pushed the cup into the center of the table, not desiring to drink anymore. “We have to keep moving, we can’t get too comfortable by staying in one place for too long.”
No shit. Frustration had been building slowly, like sandstone formed one layer at a time. She’d survived three years on her own while being hounded by hybrids; maybe she’d be better off ditching the Italian and finding her own way. He seemed a tad more concerned about his own wellbeing than theirs combined.
“You want us to split up? Go our own way?” Deanna wondered if the question revealed her thoughts.
He checked her expression then shook his head. “If we split up the hybrids will chase you and the vampires will chase me. We’re better off staying together.”
“Strength in numbers.”
If he noticed the sarcasm in her voice it didn’t show. Fabio nodded at her cup. “Have you finished with that?”
Deanna took a sip but the drink had cooled. She placed it back on the china saucer. “Yes.”
Fabio withdrew his wallet, fished out some Norwegian notes and tossed them on the table. “As funny as it sounds, I don’t feel too safe in here.”
A sensation of being watching crawled up Deanna’s back, as if woken by Fabio’s comment. She doubted any of the other customers in the diner were interested in what they had to say, if they could hear them at all. She and Fabio had been whispering so much these last six hours she expected her voice to break the next time she spoke out loud.
“Where shall we go?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet; let’s decide when we get outside.”
Her chair scraped on the wooden floor as Deanna pushed away from the table. She’d bought a pair of jeans shortly after arriving in the city center, and the purse containing her credit cards and money was stuffed deep in its pocket. She’d also purchased a fleece jacket to keep her warm once the sun set. She pulled it from the back of her chair, slipped her arms into the sleeves.
Fabio grabbed his belongings, smiled at her, and showed his hand towards the door. “After you.”
Trying hard to appear as if they belonged in the restaurant and not terrified people on the run from monsters, Deanna walked with confident strides towards the main door. Although none of the other customers paid them any attention she never felt safe anymore; as if the claws of a beast were at her back, one lunge away from tearing into her flesh.
* * *
The waiter watched as they left the premises before moving to their table and gathering up the money and cappuccino-stained cups. He made his way back towards the kitchen, but stopped at a table near one of the external windows. Karl Johans Gate held a fair number of early afternoon shoppers but he could still locate the man and woman; standing near one of the outside tables apparently discussing which way they should go. She nodded across the road, towards the parliament building. He pointed in the other direction, indicating to the right where the Royal Palace was situated.
Occupying a seat near the window, a blonde woman with the most striking cobalt eyes he’d ever seen reached out and dropped some coins in his hand.
“You’re sure that’s them?” she asked, her accented Norwegian indicating she originated from somewhere in the far reaches of northern Norway.
He nodded. “I’m positive. Don’t lose sight of them.”
She smiled, and looked absolutely stunning. Gathering up her handbag and slipping sunglasses onto her perfect face, she headed out of the restaurant and stood behind the couple, reaching into the bag as if checking her belongings.
The waiter studied her ass for a while, tight training pants flawlessly defining the shape of her buttocks, until the targets moved away into the crowd. She followed.
Collecting her dirty plate, and with arms full of dishes and cutlery, he hurried through the bar area to the kitchen. Depositing the plates on a counter he sidled into the corner of the room.
His coat hung from a hook on the wall and he reached into the inside pocket and retrieved a folded sheet of paper. Opening the faxed photograph, he stared at the face of the man who had just this moment left the restaurant.
He smiled and reached into his trouser pocket.
Pulling out a cell phone, the vampire made a call to Italy.
EIGHT
Vigeland Sculpture Park,
The Frogner Park,
Oslo, Norway
They hunted in pairs yet with a combined effort.
Six vampires pressed down from the north, moving swiftly across the park’s width. Four others waited at the south-western perimeter, ensuring their prey couldn’t escape. Ten vampires tracking two mortals seemed a little overkill, but Markus’s orders had been clear and Anton had never been one to disobey the command of such an honored Elder.
A three-quarter moon peeked around the jagged edge of altostratus clouds but failed to offer much illumination. It played in the vampire’s favor; Anton didn’t need light to determine his surroundings yet knew the mortals were running almost blind. The park spread before him as a field of light gray with the darkened outlines of trees, uniform and straight, lining the pathways. Directly ahead stood the park’s bronze fountain; visible as a deeper shadow in the night even from this distance. Its statues of babies and skeletons cradled in trees resembled forlorn ghosts against the backdrop of an overcast sky.
So far, the chase was going well.
To his right, in the distance, two local Norwegian vampires stalked the open space, their movement swift but not rushed. He glanced left and picked out the silhouettes of Raphael and Gino, the two vampires progressing at a similar determined pace. Paolo stayed close, on his right hand side and a little behind.
Markus had hand-picked the four Eliminators for this task, and within half an hour of receiving the telephone call they’d utilized the Elders’ private jet to fly direct to the Norwegian capital. Markus himself wanted to personally oversee the hunt but with his wife flying in that very night from Romania the weight of this important crusade rested on Anton’s shoulders.
He relished the opportunity but knew that this time they didn’t dare fail.
So far their contacts had proven valuable. The couple had been followed since early afternoon after they’d dined at a well-known restaurant, and the trailing vampire had been discreet enough that the mortal’s hadn’t suspected a thing. Within a half hour of landing at Gardermoen airport, Anton and the three Eliminators under his command traveled into Oslo for the rendezvous with their Norwegian counterparts.
During the summer, night creeps slowly across Norway, and even this far south it doesn’t fully become night until closer to midnight. An ominous dusk had accompanied Anton and his men when they swooped onto the last known location of the Italian and his female companion. The couple had tried to seek shelter in the gardens of a block of flats in the Majorstua district but for whatever reason they’d already left the scene. It wasn’t hard to pick up the trail again: a summer wind whispered through the Scandinavian metropolis and carried the scent of many mortals to the vampire’s senses. The stench of Fabio Morani was easy to detect: Mediterranean, unwashed, and aglow with panic.
Anton deployed the troops at his disposal quickly, and the trap had been set. Little did the mortals know they were being corralled towards the waiting vampires at the park’s southern perimeter.
The breeze seemed stronger here in the park, the absence of buildings allowing nature more freedom of expression. The vampires moved in silence, the only sound drifting to his ears being the murmur of foliage in the bough’s of trees and the panicked hiss of fleeing mortals.
Anton couldn’t contain his sly grin any longer. Yes; the chase is going very well, indeed.
The wind changed direction and the mortal scent was gone. Anton stopped; standing motionless next to a tree by one of the park’s many pathways. He glanced to his right; noticed that Paolo had ceased his forward motion too. The vampire remained twenty paces to Anton’s right and slightly behind, his pale face strident against the gloom and his dark attire. Anton’s eyes scanned the park; the fountain closer now but still just a darkened outline in the gloom. Further to his right, the monolith stretched towards the cover of summer cloud. Silence prevailed in the park. The sound of the mortal’s hurried escape no longer reached his ears. Can they sense a change in the wind too? To Anton it felt like a portent; a harbinger of bad events.
The wind returned but brought with it an intense odor that flooded his senses and sent adrenalin surging through his undead veins. His irises retracted, pupils swamping his eyes until they resembled darkened orbs. Fangs tightened in his jaw.
Anton pulled open his trench coat and cautiously withdrew the saber from its scabbard. He glanced at Paolo; saw that the younger vampire had sensed it too.
“Licantropo,” Anton whispered, and his colleague nodded.
What in the name of the Elders are werewolves doing in this park?
The faint aroma of their targets reached his nose, altering him to their position: straight ahead, in line with the fountain. Were the lycanthrope’s tracking the mortals too? Somehow Anton doubted it. The Italian had not made any claims about the existence of Anton’s wolfish cousins and as far as he knew the man hadn’t cut open any of their breed in the name of science. It seemed to be a very unfortunate coincidence.
This could turn ugly.
Anton’s eternal muscles tightened as the first scream bellowed through the park. The hideous roar of a lycanthrope preceded it, but the distressed shrieking caused Anton’s chilly, undead blood to run ice-cold.
He had no idea whose cries they were but the screams were definitely vampiric, originated from his left, and were filled with tortured agony.
* * *
Deanna stopped running. “Shit; did you hear that?”
Fabio staggered to a stop about ten paces ahead. “Yes, I did. Come on; we have to keep moving.”
Her initial thought had been hybrids but the roar sounded nothing like what she’d heard previously. Deep with a more pronounced timbre, the growl had been guttural: animalistic. Werewolf! The realization sent fear surging through her like a bolt of lightning.
The inhuman shrieking ended abruptly. A low snarl rippled the night air, its sound resembling the distant grumble of a hungry storm.
Voices echoed in the abyss behind her; the panicked shouts of her pursuers. This could be their chance. For reasons beyond her comprehension there were werewolves in the park and the chasing vampires had walked right into them. With the hunters occupied, she hoped for an opportunity to get away.
“Come on,” Fabio urged. “We need to get moving.”
Commotion ahead attracted her attention, the source of upheaval obscured by the dense night. Orders were shouted in Norwegian, yet even with her panicked breathing she could pick out the rustle of clothing and the heavy footfalls of running feet.
There are vampires ahead of us; and they’re heading this way!
Deanna glanced to Fabio, to warn him, but he was gone.
“Come on!”
His voice sprang from the darkness ahead; his hurried footsteps echoing against those of the closing vampires.
He’d abandoned her, not waiting for her to catch up, not holding her hand and dragging her to safety like she hoped a strong, determined man would. She’d yet to discover one of those. They’re all the bloody same.
Another roar bellowed behind her, and Deanna ran. Sprinting to her right, away from the fountain, in the opposite direction from the sounds of battle, closing vampires, and the departed Fabio, she dashed across neatly mowed grass with the scent of cold night air and supernatural monsters filling her lungs.
At the park’s highest point the monolith stretched vertically forty-six feet towards the heavens, the granite column engraved with one hundred and twenty-one naked human figures entwined as if indulging in one mass orgy. Deanna had read somewhere that the sculpture was meant to represent man’s aspiration to become closer with the spiritual and divine, but at that moment she had no such desires. A scattering of clouds turned insipid by subtle moonlight defined the impressive column.
Deanna climbed the rising terrain and although the wrought iron gates to the raised ground were locked, she clambered over the stone balustrade and dropped to the mosaic slabs decorating the plateau.
The monolith stood upon its own broad plinth, with access to the totem gained by twelve, concrete stairways separated by granite statues. To run in a direct line up the steps, over the plinth, then down the other side would be too time consuming, energy sapping, so Deanna took her course around the side of the totem’s circular pedestal.
She hoped that beyond the plateau, at the end of the park’s axis, she’d find a route into the streets of Skøyen and some form of sanctuary.
Anxious voices cut a note through the night, directly ahead of her, beyond the plateau’s stone balustrade. More vampires, it had to be; she didn’t expect any werewolves would be in their human form and able to talk. She controlled her gasp of panic, not allowing it to break her lips and alert them to her presence; she only hoped her shoes didn’t make too much noise on the concrete slabs.
Turning away from the approaching vampires, Deanna ran in the opposite direction around the podium.
She didn’t see the colossal, dark figure hidden in the shadows until it was too late.
* * *
<
br /> Anton could tell the body had been ripped to pieces even before he reached the scene.
Copious amounts of undead blood stained the grass, and the tubular shapes of spilled intestines trailed over the ground like the slain bodies of serpents. The savaged neck gave way to a pastel face that stared from the gloom with an expression of terrified surprise etched across its features. Moonbeams reflected off the discarded sword, its blade devoid of werewolf blood. It seemed Gino hadn’t stood a chance in the attack.
Curse those wolfed demons all the way to hell!
The foul odor of werewolf hung heavily in the air. Anton scanned the nearby tree line but saw nothing. It seemed the brutes had made their attack then moved on.
“Over there, Sire!”
Anton turned and followed the direction of Paolo’s gaze.
Raphael sat next to the trunk of a Norwegian maple, his upper body propped against the bark. His dark clothing concealed most of him amidst the night but his face seemed paler than usual. Anton moved cautiously to his comrade’s side. The vampire’s eyes flickered, glancing at Anton as he approached. Breath left the immortal in short gasps of obvious agony. Claw marks racked the vampire’s chest, clothing shredded. Raphael’s spilled blood, carried to Anton on a subtle breeze, smelled sweet and aromatic. The vampire’s abdomen had been carved open, intestines twisting around his motionless legs.
The Eliminator’s brain remained intact, the heart still beating, and while blood continued to flow through an immortal body there was always the chance of a full regeneration. Raphael’s prospects were bleak, but at least the ancient vampire was still alive.
“Which way?” Anton asked.
They still had a primary target to take care of—werewolves to dispatch as well, it seemed—and Raphael understood his needs were of secondary concern. He glanced to his left, towards the fountain and the park’s bridge.
The distant shouts of his vampire comrades at the southern perimeter drifted from that direction; as did the faint aroma of the fleeing mortal. The sounds of lumbering werewolves filtered through the night, their panted breath lusting after the man’s flesh curling a knot of apprehension in Anton’s guts.
Monsters and Mortals - Blood War Trilogy Book II Page 8
