Vampire "Unleashed" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 3) (13 page)

The bathtub was running. Water was running. She could hear it. They would drown her if she didn’t fight.

“You hurt my baby and I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you.”

She was up, her arms swinging, her voice screeching. She grabbed the gunman’s weapon unafraid that it pointed at her chest and kicked as hard as she could between his legs, missing the mark but making him jerk his knees together in defence. She moved with the power of a train to grab at his lapel and pressed him back to the wall, almost lifting him off the floor.

She could hear the water running.

Nothing would stop her. Nothing. She reached out to grab Alina and felt her head yank back as her hair was pulled. They forced her to the floor, dropped on top of her, rested a knee in her chest and smashed the butt of the gun into her nose.

“Don’t you fucking hurt my baby!”

Her arms flailed and again superhuman strength managed to push back enough to buy her a sliver of space. She made it to the wall with two men wrestling her. Her arms found the bookcase and she leaned against it for purchase, standing despite the weight on her back. She was thrown and swung to knock her off balance. Her clothing was pulled and she saw her chance; she tipped forward and slipped backwards out of her top to leave the two men holding her empty pullover and her in only a bra as she darted for the child a second time.

Another punch. Harder. Flush on her nose. Another and something broke. Pain spread across her face. A knee was pressed across her throat holding her down. Then she heard Alina squeal in pain, screaming, crying and shrieking as something hurt her.

There was nothing she could do. She was overcome and held down. The gunman was pressed across her chest with his knee under her chin, he was gasping. She had only one hand for free movement and used it to punch him in the balls but didn’t have the range of movement to hurt him. It didn’t stop her trying and she punched repeatedly. Another knee came down, this time from the tall man and it pressed her head to the side. She could see Ana lying handcuffed under an armchair, unconscious, out of the fight. Alina cried but couldn’t be seen. Ildico couldn’t move. She couldn’t move at all and the build-up of stress and energy that had given her the strength to fight two men burst forth as she cried out with impotent rage.

She couldn’t protect her baby.

She wasn’t strong enough to fight three men.

“Ildico… Ildico, listen to me.” A hand slapped across her face. “Listen!”

There was some more talking in a foreign language, then some shuffling and then a camera flash went off. A hand gripped her hair and twisted her head. The camera flash went again.

She was pulled to her feet and her arms locked behind her back. It was the tall thin man, standing behind her, holding her arms in a lock she couldn’t break. Her eyes opened for a moment to survey the scene. Alina had been put on the armchair atop the unconscious policewoman. There was blood all over her.

The Suit tucked the gun into his belt and removed a folding knife from his pocket. The dull grey blade locked into place with a click.

“Don’t hurt my baby,” Ildico yelped. “Do what you want to me, but don’t hurt my baby.”

The Suit was panting, dishevelled, out of breath from the fight and wearing an expression of rage. He held the knife in his left hand, drew his right hand back and flew in with a ferocious punch that broke her nose.

The pain was nothing.

Ildico kicked out and threw her weight from side to side. She still pulled hard and fought, throwing herself towards Alina. She had to get her. She had to wrap her arms around her and save her.

The Suit punched her again and this time brought the knife to her face. “Stop it!” He screamed. “Stop it or I’ll cut your baby’s throat…”

Ildico stopped. The man’s face was bright red. He was seething with rage, breathing through clenched teeth.

“Where is Paul McGovern?” he yelled.

“I don’t know,” she cried back.

The knife was put under her bra and the clothing cut to release her breasts. She looked down to see blood running across her chest from her face. The suit yanked her hair back and began slicing her forehead with the knife. “Where is Paul McGovern,” he screamed as he cut. “Where is he? Tell me or I’ll gut your fucking child.” She felt pressure on her scalp and a rush of blood across her face. Thick drops fell from her eyebrows ahead of her eyes.

“I don’t know.”

The camera flashed.

The suit stepped back and pointed his blade at the baby. “I swear,” he panted, “I’m going to kill your kid unless you tell me where he is right now.”

“I don’t know,” she screeched. “Nobody knows where he is.” The camera flashed again.

The knife was lowered. The Suit seemingly getting the message, seeming to understand that she would have given Paul up in a heartbeat for the sake of Alina. His stance softened, his muscles relaxed and he put his hands on his hips and looked about the room. It was trashed, there were bloody handprints on the walls.

The sound of running water could still be heard from the bathroom. Alina began to cry with a different sound. It was the cry for attention, the sound when she wanted to be picked up.

“It’s alright Alina. Mummy is alright,” she said in Romanian. She was half naked, her nose broken, dripping with blood and in the clutches of a masked man. “Don’t cry, baby. Mummy is fine.”

The Suit rubbed at his brow, lamented a few words then folded the knife and took his gun from his belt and pointed it into Ildico’s face.

This is it, Ildico thought. This is where I die.

The camera flashed. Then the gun was pushed into her mouth

It tasted like dirty coins.

I’m going to die… I’m going to die.

The camera flashed… it flashed again... once more… then the gun was withdrawn. The men spoke in their foreign language, a moment’s discussion before the gunman waved a hand and Ildico was released. She grabbed Alina and scurried to the corner to curl in a ball, shielding the child with her back.

----- X -----

Miklos emptied the magazine and bullets from the policewoman’s pistol and left her gun on the kitchen table along with her belt and its law enforcement accoutrements. He threw the bullets into the snow. He would not be guilty of stealing a police officer’s gun.

Loro handed Miklos the camera before unzipping his coat and allowing Ludovik to clasp his hands to the bullet wound through his shoulder. Miklos flicked through the images of a bloody, half naked Ildico screaming and crying. The picture with the gun in her mouth was the money shot. Her eyes were wide circles in a face painted red.

“How bad?” Miklos asked Loro of his shoulder.

“I’ve had worse… I left a lot of DNA back there.”

“I know.” Miklos replied. “We’ll get you patched in the van and get you out of this shithole country.”

Miklos opened the van and both he and Ludovik helped Loro into one of the jump seats. Ludovik went straight for the first aid kit. Agron looked behind him to see his friend bleeding all over the seats. Miklos closed the door and reached into Loro’s coat to put pressure on the wound whilst Ludovik prepared a dressing. “Get us back to Brasov, Agron… Nice and easy.”

The van rumbled its engine and drove calmly away.

“Are you alright, brother?” Agron said over his shoulder.

Loro winced, unable to mask his pain. “I’ll survive.”

Agron reached one hand back and felt through the air until Loro grabbed his hand and the two men locked fingers. Headlights threw up ahead of them, dazzling, almost blinding as a car powered past at a stupid speed in the opposite direction. Agron yanked his hand back to the wheel and managed to avoid collision by a fraction of a second. “Handikapat!” he lamented.

----- X -----

“That’s them!” Ciprian yelled.

Cornel had already ducked in the seat to hide. They passed. Cornel peered over the lip of the door frame to watch the van in the wing mirror as it receded to invisibility.

“What do we do?” Ciprian asked. “Do we follow them? Do you think they have her?”

“Where’s the house? We can track the van, but let’s check the house first.”

Ciprian braked hard making the wheels lock and slide across the snow. The car halted. “It’s that one,” he said pointing.

Cornel was out of the car, his gun in his hand running to the house without waiting to form a strategy or discuss with Ciprian. He’d seen the Albanians leave; that was all he needed to know.

The door was at the side of the building. It was open. He went in swinging the gun ahead of him. The lights were on. An empty bedroom, a kitchen… there was a gun on the table. Running water into an overflowing bathtub.

He heard sobbing from behind a door and moved to the living room, still leading with the gun despite seeing the bad men driving away.

What the hell?

It was carnage. Ildico Popescu was stripped to the waist and drenched in blood, the baby in her arms equally covered. There was upturned furniture, books strewn from a bookcase, blood splashed up the walls. Another woman was laid on her front unmoving, her hands cuffed, an armchair tipped on its side.

What the hell had they done?

Ciprain entered the room. “Ildico! My God, Ildico.” He knelt beside her and put a hand to her shoulder and examined her face. Bleeding from a wound to her head. Ciprian pressed his hand against it. “Check her,” he said to Cornel as he motioned the unconscious woman.

It was a sight Cornel had fantasised, something he had dreamed of seeing. McGovern’s woman on her knees, bloody and in pain, crying and tormented. It had been a cornerstone of his imaginary proxy war. He’d wanted to see her like this so badly there were times when he could almost taste it.

It was horrible.

Be careful what you wish for.

Cornel leaned down to try and roll the unconscious police woman. Behind him he heard Ildico speak to Ciprian. “You said I would be safe,” she sobbed. “You know nothing.”

----- X -----

Cornel’s eyes were drooping. His head fell forward in sleep and the jarring action woke him up. He stood, stretched his arms above his head and rubbed his eyes. Ciprian had passed out on the chair with his legs splayed open and his head to one side.

Ildico was resting in the private hospital room beside them; the baby by her side. She needed four stitches to her scalp and her nose was broken. The cut to her scalp was superficial but it had bled like crazy. The doctors said she could go home but Cornel and Ciprian insisted she stay the night; firstly to ensure she was safe, secondly because they had no home to put her in and thirdly they didn’t dare leave until the responsibility of care was offloaded onto someone else.

Ciprian stirred in the chair. “What time is it?”

“Almost Seven.”

“In the morning?”

Cornel nodded. “We shouldn’t tell anyone about the tracker. I don’t want them arrested yet.”

Ciprian blinked away cobwebs. “Are you kidding? After what they did?” He climbed out of the chair to look through the window of Ildico’s room. “Is she asleep?”

“She’s resting... I can’t stop thinking about what she said of them taking photographs.”

Ciprian shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. It goes against what you say of them being cautious, of leaving minimal evidence. Why do it? It’s an outrageous crime, it’s visible. They must know that we’re going to arrest them now.”

“I think it’s theatre,” Cornel said. “They’ve got a line onto McGovern and they’re about to test him with photographs of his true love covered in blood.”

“Do you think that will make him mad?”

“I think he’ll go off like a fucking atom bomb. They’re going to try and push him somehow. They’re probably going to make threats. It might work, he might take the bait… I want to see what happens. I don’t want them arrested until after they try and contact him. I want to see if they can succeed.”

“If they think she’s so important, why not kidnap her, offer her as an exchange?”

“I don’t think we can know what they’re thinking. But again, it’s that caution I told you about. On the surface they seem to be doing really bad things, but what did they do? Trespass in a home, violence against a police officer, violence against the person; it’s very aggressive but how long would they serve in prison?

“A couple of years. It has to be for this.”

“Maybe… but they seem to know where the red lines are. They must think or assume we’re watching and yet they still did this. They’ve walked right into a police safe house to do this… They just seem to know things… I mean, how the hell did they end up at the safe house to begin with? How could they know about it?”

Ciprian leaned against the wall. “Oh fuck, I didn’t even think of that… it’s got to be an informant. Someone inside feeding them information. Jesus, we can’t even trust the… oh fuck… oh really, fuck, fuck, fuck… how the hell do we protect her? Who do we trust?”

“That’s why I don’t want to tell anyone about the tracker. The Albanians are going to try and flush out McGovern and I want to see if they can succeed.”

Ciprian was quiet for a minute, then said, “If we don’t mention the tracker, how do we explain going to Dumbravita ourselves?”

“We were following them. We had them under surveillance. Lost them around Codlea, realised they could be heading to Dumbravita and called for backup… Are you prepared to lie to your boss?”

“Not really.”

Cornel shook his head. “Look, If anyone asks how we knew the Albanians were in Dumbravita, just change the subject and demand to know how the Albanians knew to go there.”

----- X -----

At nine in the morning Cornel’s telephone rang. “Are you still trying to be a civilian hero?” It was Lupescu.

“Strange things are happening, Ion. Troubling things. I told you to put the Popescu girl out of harm’s way yet the Albanians found her. How did that happen?”

“That was my first question too. Is Cojacaru with you?”

“He is.”

“Put him on.”

Cornel handed the phone to Ciprian. “It’s Lupescu, for you.”

The young policeman sat erect as he listened to what Lupescu was saying. “I’m not sure,” Ciprian said whilst looking straight at Cornel. I’ll talk to the doctors and see if she can be moved… uh huh… uh… mmm, yes Sir. I understand… I will Sir. Yes Sir. Goodbye.”