Vampire "Unleashed" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 3) (24 page)

“That’s Paul,” Ildico said incredulously.

“It can’t be,” Noica replied.

The man from the helicopter started walking towards them. As he stepped into the pool of light cast from above the entrance he looked rust coloured, the dried blood of two dozen policemen had smeared his face, his hair, had soaked his clothes and dried as war paint.

“It is Paul…” Ildico said again.

Cornel didn’t wait. He was backing inside the building, holding Ildico’s arm, tugging her along with him. “Lucian… we need to get inside. Now. NOW!”

The approaching man held a gun loosely in his left hand.

“Come on, move!” Cornel yelled.

They entered the building. Noica hit a switch to activate the electromagnetic lock on the door and backed away. All of them moving as a group towards the rear as they watched the approaching man through the glass. They backed up to the far end of the lobby, to the plate glass window that looking out to the chapel in the courtyard.

Cornel pulled out his gun.

What was it Bogdan had said… run away… always run away… but to where?

McGovern approached the darkened glass. He tried the door and found it locked. A single gunshot broke the pane into a shattering waterfall of glass cubes and he stepped inside like a shadow under a waterfall of glass shards.

Cornel raised his gun and backed up behind Ildico, grabbing her shoulder, then pointed the gun from beside her face to use her as a human shield. “That’s far enough Paul… This is over,” he shouted.

McGovern said nothing. His right hand raised to his chest and pulled the karambit away from its holster. A knife in his right hand, a gun in his left.

“I said it’s over, Paul… Look, it doesn’t have to be like this…”

The vampire said, “Ildico?”

“Yes, Paul, it’s me,” she cried back with tears.

“Who is that you’re holding?”

Ildico sobbed a huge cry. “This is Alina. She is your daughter.”

Latis was out of options. He had the gun pointed over Ildico’s shoulder, he was aimed true over McGovern’s heart but didn’t dare pull the trigger.

The baby balanced on Ildico’s hip turned her head to look straight at her father. She reached out a hand. She squealed in happiness as though she had seen the most delightful thing. “Omul!” She exclaimed opening and closing her fist in a baby wave.

McGovern smiled at the interaction. For one second, he had his eyes on the little girl and he was distracted.

Latis fired.

McGovern dropped with the speed of a mousetrap to evade the bullet.

Ildico flinched, she bent her knees in reflex ducking down as Cornel aimed another shot across the top of her head.

He panicked in his aim.

Ildico stood up… It was an accident. Oh, God it was an accident… Ildico stood up… and at point blank range, he put a bullet into the back of her skull.

----- X -----

Paul saw the cascading nervous system of Cornel Latis moving to shoot. He saw that Ildico had ducked down then was jumping up, ready to run. She was trying to get out of the way. It was the proverbial crash in slow motion.

Latis reflex was in motion. The trigger would be pulled. Ildico’s reflex was in motion and both her and Latis were about to cross paths in the most horrific way.

The horror slowed down to a snail’s pace, forcing him to watch it all, to see every detail. It began as her right eye twitched around the socket and her ear began to move outward. A reverse shock of yellow lines rushed in two directions, one from her knees in a jerk response, yanking her away from the danger that had already happened; the second set of lines blushed from her face as a shockwave of pain. Her system overloaded with electrical energy, the lines crashing against one another like waves against a breakwater.

Lucian Noica was jolting forward, his arms outstretched for the baby, the look of horror across his face palpable. His arms outstretched, one under Alina, one around Ildico as she slumped.

They hit the floor together. Ildico dropped. Noica got partly underneath and grasped at the baby, breaking her fall with his arm.

Paul screamed in heart bursting anguish, “Nooooo!”

He rushed forward towards her. He looked up. Latis was aiming the gun again. He fired. The bullet struck his chest, Skimming off his clavicle by the left shoulder, breaking his collarbone and whizzing up the side of his neck to burn like a poker had touched the skin.

Latis fired again but this time Paul was ready, anticipated the shot and avoided.

Latis fired once more, but Paul was ready. He raised his own gun and fired back. Left handed, no experience, the shot went wild and burst the plate glass window at the back of the lobby. The shock of the pistol jarred fiercely through his clavicle.

Latis fired again. Missed.

Paul lowered the pistol and raised the karambit, scowling.

Latis turned and ran the only way he could, outside through the broken plate glass and into the courtyard.

Paul followed, suddenly aching from the wound to his flank and grinding bones by his neck and shoulder. He watched Latis survey the courtyard. There was a pathway from the church back to the hospital and Latis darted for the door to get back inside the institute. It was locked. He turned, panicking, and went for the church, the door was unlocked and he vanished inside.

Ildico.

He had killed Ildico.

He shot her in the back of the head for no fucking reason.

Ildico… oh, God.

Paul got to the church door and almost took a bullet to the face. Latis had tactical experience. He’d lured Paul into a tight doorframe from where he could get a clean shot without Paul being able to evade.

He jerked back and looked around the door jamb with one eye. Latis was inside an empty church lit with powerful halogen lights. Latis fired again with good aim. Paul pushed his gun around the door jamb and fired six times blindly as he entered, hoping, expecting, praying that Latis would take cover whilst he got out of this deadly doorway. The wounds hurt. The shockwave from the gunshots rattled the broken bones and tore at his flank.

The detective had run halfway to the back of the church and suddenly stopped. He turned and stood firmly with gun outstretched. Paul tossed his gun aside and flexed his fingers around the knife. He would take on Corneliu Latis with a blade.

They faced off in the space of a cleared chapel. It was stripped of pews or ornaments, illuminated from lights atop yellow tubular steel tripods.

Latis fired the gun and Paul dodged the shot easily.

Ildico… he had killed Ildico.

Latis fired and again Paul evaded. Too easy. The yellow lines of impulse too easy to read. Latis pulled the trigger a third time… and the gun went click.

There was a moment of pause. Paul watched the detective, wondering, contemplating how to finish this man. Latis was looking back over his shoulder. It was then that Paul could see he’d run as far as he could go. The floor beyond Latis had been excavated to a deep hole. It looked as though there were floors beneath the church, a basement or dungeon, exposed now that the floor had been removed.

“You killed her,” Paul whispered.

“Paul… I’m sorry… I… I...” he tried to speak, he tried to say things but nothing happened. His body trembled, his hands lifted to his face, still holding the empty handgun.

Paul approached.

The man didn’t try to run. He didn’t cry out.

Paul swung the karambit and caught Latis across the hands first, cutting deep into his fingers. He grabbed his hands into fists as Paul slumped forward as though falling to his knees, but then punched up and out, making a powerful slice through the detective’s abdomen, the intestines instantly spilling.

“Oh, God…” was all Latis had time to say.

Paul jumped forward and grabbed at the spilling guts as he shoved him over the precipice, sending him backwards into the crypt, his intestines spilling out like a guide rope, one looped end in McGovern’s fist, the rest unspooling until he hit the stone floor at the bottom. Paul tossed the loop of guts after him once he’d crashed.

The fall was sickening but survivable.

Paul wanted to go down there and finish him but the only way up and down was via a hydraulic platform. The control panel was filled with unlit lights. Did it have power? What if he went down and couldn’t get back out.

It didn’t matter, there was a worse fate for him.

In the crypt Paul could now see three naked white men. They were made of marble, with perfect muscle definition. The strigoi were in there. Three of them. They weren’t his own strigoi, they were uniquely different. He watched as they circled and took turns laying on top of Latis, completely invisible to the detective but perfectly visible to himself. They were ghosts. Wraiths. Invisible naked men trying to infect the wounded man.

Somehow Paul could sense it wouldn’t work. The strigoi were keys, the host was the keyhole. The key fit Cornel but the lock wouldn’t turn. It would drive him into madness. Paul couldn’t understand how he knew this, but somehow the whole strigoi lifecycle was laid before him. This place made perfect sense to him and he would have loved to stay and touch the strigoi down there.

A sound came to break the silence. A faint buzzing of rotor blades.

Paul backtracked out of the church in time to see a helicopter fly overhead as it turned on a searchlight. The helicopter was painted in camouflage colours. Military.

----- X -----

Lucian Noica was sitting in a pool of Ildico Popescu’s blood. He was hugging Alina to his chest and rocking back and forth. Paul stepped through the plate window into the lobby. Over the front entrance of the hospital the searchlight beamed strongly and the sound of the helicopter increased as it prepared to land.

Lucian stared up at Paul wide eyed as he approached. He knelt down beside Ildico’s corpse. He leaned forward on his knees like he was about to pray and touched his lips against Ildico’s shattered skull. “I’m sorry, Ildico… I love you… I’m sorry.” He rested a hand on her back for a moment then turned his attention to the doorway. The helicopter was landing.

“Paul, you can stop this,” Lucian said. “You can stop everything.”

He nodded, staring away to the side in contemplation.

Alina held out her hand towards him. He reached back and allowed her to wrap her hand around one of his bloody fingers. “I can’t look after you yet… You are beautiful… You are my daughter.”

The helicopter engines were at full tilt. Over the entrance snow was blowing in from the downdraft of the rotors. Soldiers would be here in seconds.

Paul stood and looked directly into Lucian’s eyes. “I want you to look after her,” he pointed to baby. “You, Noica. Understand? You are going to be her guardian. Don’t let anything happen to her. Don’t make me come back and hurt you.”

He turned his back and walked a few steps, then stopped in his tracks to say one last thing. “It’s deeper. The source. The church was built to cover it. There’s something very horrible down there. If you dig deeper you’ll find it… but I suggest you don’t…” he pointed a finger at the baby. “Look after her.”

The sound of voices came from outside. Orders were barked in military tones against the sound of the helicopter’s thunder. Paul jogged away crashing through the corridor doors.

Lucian held Alina tighter, the little girl making barely any sound whilst staring curiously at her mother’s corpse. He heard shouting, lights beamed into his eyes. Soldiers with guns, rifles with flashlights slung beneath them.

“He’s gone that way. Noica pointed. He’s been shot in the chest. You can follow the blood trail.”

----- X -----

The soldiers followed the blood trail through a corridor and out through a fire exit. They followed it to the foot of the mountain and discovered bloody footprints in the snow. They knew they had to follow now before the tracks were covered by any further snowfall. They did it slowly and carefully and it took them most of the night to climb the three hundred meters to the summit of the ridge and they wasted more time when the tracks led to a lookout post to which they took defensive positions for some hours before realising it was empty. They slowly followed the trail, periodically losing it and carefully searching to reacquire without causing false trails of their own. It was long and slow. Dawn was breaking by the time they’d made it down the other side.

They found the hovel.

They found tracks from a motorbike. The blood trail had ended. The bike trails ended. They found nothing.

Epilogue

“I hope we never see him again. I have personal reasons for that.” Lucian Noica said as he sipped his coffee.

Minster Vadescu had his eyes on the ass of a waitress as she walked through the restaurant. “Ah, ha… yes, you do. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you adopted his daughter?”

“Because he told me to and I’m terrified he might be watching. If one day he does come back, I will have done nothing to upset him.”

“You’re appeasing the criminal,” Vadescu said with a soft air of self-righteousness.

“To protect myself. He’s out there somewhere and one day he may come knocking on my door.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Vadescu said. “but let’s suppose he did… what do we do? If he ever resurfaces? How do we contain him?”

“How do you contain McGovern? Drop a bomb on him, that’s my advice. That is a law enforcement issue, I haven’t an opinion on it. But over fifty armed police tried to arrest him. He killed eight and put twenty in hospital. If we couldn’t catch one man with fifty officers, how many do you think you need?”

“I thought he killed seven?”

Lucian shook his head. “Corneliu Latis, the man who tracked him in London died of injuries and illness about a month ago… Of course, that’s just McGovern’s Brasov death toll, God only knows how many people he’s killed that we don’t know about.”

Vadescu dropped a sugar lump into his coffee and stirred. “I dread to think what would happen if he resurfaced.”

“He surfaces all the time, in stories. At least once a month I get an email about an Englishman in Uzbekistan knife fighting for money. Apparently all the criminals of Tashkent are terrified of him like he’s Batman or something… but nobody ever has details, nobody can take a picture of him, it’s always third hand as a friend of a friend. I get other reports from Russia, about an Englishman who murders prostitutes, and I’ve seen more than twenty rumours of an Englishman with a Samurai sword murdering young girls in Siberia… They’re stories. Urban legends. He’s become a myth. There are websites about him. There is even a website where women share their sexual fantasies about him. The Brasov attack videos are so well circulated that Paul McGovern has become the modern day Bigfoot… Sightings here. Trails there. Unsolved murders someplace else. It’s at a point where anytime there’s an unsolved murder involving a knife or a sword the first thing people think is Paul McGovern.”