Vampire "Untitled" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

Paul fell backwards as it came loose landing him flat
on his ass. He lifted the twine and enjoyed his prize; it was a beautiful
little cross. He lightly spat on it and rubbed the dirt from it to find a tiny
hallmark. It had to be silver. His imagination of priests with crucifix daggers
wasn’t far from truth. This must have been hung from above at some point, had
fallen to the earth and been trampled into the ground.

Righting himself he moved back to the spot it had come
from and saw two sticks poking from the earth. They were bleached white...

They were bones.

His medical knowledge stretched as far as a first aid
course taken years ago, but somehow he recognised exactly what he was seeing.

“Oh fuck...” He looked at the little silver cross
again. “You didn’t fall from above, did you?”

The bones were the ends of the radius and ulna, the
two large bones of the forearm. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew it
with unassailable certainty. This little silver cross had been tied around the
wrist of a skeleton; and he’d just yanked it free.

Knocking over the cross was an accident. In fact the
wood was so rotten it was an accident waiting to happen, but by exposing the
remains he had unquestionably disturbed this Christian holy site.

Without thinking he dropped the cross in his pocket
and set about planting the big cross back into the ground. He lined it up and
leant on it with all of his weight but it would go no further than an inch or
two into the frozen earth. Whoever planted it originally probably did so in
loose warm earth, with a sharpened point on the end and used a big wooden
mallet to hammer it home.

“This is never going in,” he whispered.

He placed the cross on the floor, matching the broken
end with the stump already in the ground. Perhaps it would look as though the
wood had rotted away and had fallen of its own accord. That didn’t explain the
exposed human remains but he wouldn’t be around long enough to be forced to
account for that detail.

Moments later he was outside of the hollow, walking
away. He’d come to look at the grave of a vampire and like some bumbling
Inspector Clouseau had broken the grave and unearthed a corpse. He felt like an
idiot. A worried idiot.

“Leave it be,” he said to himself. “Just walking away,
it was like that when I got here.”

He was fewer than twenty paces out when he heard the
growl.

“What... The fuck... Was that?”

He stopped dead and went silent, straining his
hearing. He turned his head slowly each way, listening. There had definitely
been the sound of an animal and his mind rushed with imaginations of Dragoste,
hunting alone, attacked by a rabid dog.

Paul rotated on the spot, searching for it, sensing
something not quite right.

Then he saw it.

Rather he saw movement some distance away. Blended
between the tree trunks and snow, something shifted. It had to be at least
seventy or eighty yards away but there was definitely movement. When Paul
looked at it directly, it froze and dissolved into the background.

“That’s too big to be a dog,” he whispered. “Is it...
is it a bear?”

Then movement came again but from a slightly different
angle. Again it was the camouflage of white against forest but this time it was
closer. What the hell was it?

Then movement came for a third time. Closer, much
closer, perhaps sixty yards. He stared directly at it and saw the subtle shift
as it moved behind a fallen tree. The branches along its felled length
stretched up to the sky in a latticework that obscured the background and this
thing behind it seemed aware of the deception. It seemed to be using the cover
to sneak closer. It also seemed...

OH FUCK - It was a man!

No mistaking, they were stood upright, leaning forward
in a slight stoop. But whoever it was, they were disguised in some way. Perhaps
they were wearing hunters clothing, camouflaged by a disruptive leaf pattern to
match the winter surrounds.

Then he vanished, or she vanished. Whoever it was
seemed to merge with the forest and be gone. “This is wrong,” Paul mouthed
without making a noise. “Who sneaks around forests in the early morning, in
camouflage?” Then a thought. If he could see them, they could obviously see
him.

Camouflage?

A hunter perhaps? Which meant they probably had a gun
and...

Paul made a few steps to his side to backtrack out of
the place. At the same time he saw another shift in the background, back along
the same line of sight, but this time it was way too close for comfort. It was
a man, definitely a man, but he had slipped closer behind tree cover and was
peering slowly from behind a wide tree trunk at only forty yards. There was no
face that he could see, rather he was dressed as the forest. Wearing a ghillie
suit maybe? Why are they trying to close in? What if they had a gun?

Panic came almost as though it counted down.

Ready... Paul felt the air tighten around him. Why was
this person doing this?

Steady... a breath of wind pushed into his face,
blowing past his ears as though somebody was breathing on him. He realised just
how alone and secluded he was. This person was toying with him, playing a game.

Movement, twenty yards out, behind a bush. It was a
man. It had the shape of a man, but all he really saw was the trailing edge. A
disruptive pattern of snow white and lattice branches to blend with the forest.

RUN!

Get out of here, just go, go, go. Paul was sprinting
back along the trail. Create some distance. Oh Jesus, what if they have a gun,
what if they’re lining their sights to shoot now? They’ll hit me in the back. Dodge,
zigzag, move!

Paul took a sudden turn off the trail by twisting to
his right and jumping down a steeper incline into deeper snow. His foot snagged
on something and he fell forward, losing his balance through a combination of
the incline and speed. He fell face flat on the snow, reflexively allowing the
fall to happen as a way to hide and cover from view. He broke the fall with his
forearms and felt snow push up inside the cuffs of his jacket on landing. He
lay prone for less than a second. This wasn’t safe. Keep running.

Jumping to his feet he felt another breath of air,
blowing on his neck and with the same feeling of an exhaled breath. Get out of
here, just keep running and... The terrain ahead was steep, jagged and tangled
with fallen branches. Coming off the path was potentially fatal. Look around.
Quick! Ten yards to the left, a small trench of about six feet deep and ten
wide, a miniature valley heading straight down the mountain. It looked like an
extension of the V shaped gully he’d traversed earlier. An exit if he could run
along it.

He went over the crest, glancing to his side and for a
split second saw the disruptive pattern moving through the forest parallel to
himself. It was a man... What the hell?

His heart was already breaking but seeing this man
giving chase made it burst with a charge of adrenalin. “Oh fuck, get out of
here, get out of here.” Whoever it was, they had stalked him first. Now they
were chasing. What would they do if they caught him?

The trench looked good. He was already running
downhill but was still high on the sloping side, gradually falling towards the
base. He took a slight leap sideways to hit the nadir but on impact there was a
strange crack and a rush of pain... Broken leg... he didn’t even have time to
complete the thought when it happened again with the other foot. It was ice.
The trench was a stream or underground spring. It had running water gushing
through with a layer of ice over the top and snow disguising the whole thing.
Paul screamed out in a yelp, his feet punched two holes through ice leaving him
up to his knees in running water. His momentum still carried him and he fell
forward on the snow feeling the ice beneath him break. His knee dropped into
the water to touch the stream bed and the searing stabbing pain of ice water
rushed through his legs.

With an awkward crawling leap, Paul somehow managed to
throw himself at the opposite bank and start scrambling away. His breathing
wracked his lungs, his heart was bursting, bleeding into his chest with
exertion and desperation.

Words or moans slurred from his lips as he found extra
reserves of panic fuelled energy to keep running and pound his feet along the
edge of the trench. Don’t fall back in, please don’t fall back in.

The position was good. So long as he stayed on the lip
of where he felt the stream was he got good purchase on the ice beneath.

As his body started to fail he chanced a glance back.
He had to decide now whether to continue running or just use the last of his
strength to defend against whoever was following. He didn’t see them, but that
didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Running low on energy his sprinting became a steady
run, his desperate strides became considered paces. He looked back four or five
times before he left the forest but never saw whoever, or whatever it was
again.

As he fell from the forest into the village he placed
his hands on his hips and walked, gasping for air, burning with heat under his
coat. His feet and jeans were soaking wet and ice cold. It felt safer here. He
was stood on a real road and he could see people queuing for the bus to Brasov. He could see the shop and the tower blocks. He was back to civilisation, away from
haunted forests of vampire graves and camouflaged crazy people.

“Thank fuck I’m here,” Paul gasped, “and don’t ever go
back in those forests again.”

He remembered what Ildico and John had said about not
going back, he saw Ildico in his mind’s eye being scared and telling him not to
go in the forest. Paul nodded as though agreeing with her, still gasping for breath,
trying to regain composure enough to answer Ildico in spirit. “You got that
right, Ildico. Don’t go in the forest. Don’t go in the forest.”

----- X -----

Walking
in socks soaked with ice water was miserable. His shoes made a squelching noise
and his legs felt chilled to the bone from the wet jeans. More than that, his
groin was chaffing against the wet denim and it was becoming seriously
uncomfortable. At the same time he could feel a burning heat from under his
collar as his body stressed itself trying to raise his core temperature to
counter the cold. Freezing cold legs, overheating body and delicate skin
rubbing raw. It was just misery.

That misery threatened to extend as Paul approached
his block. On the opposite side of the street, Big Man was stood with his arm
around the young boy. The moment Paul saw them he slipped around the back of a
parked van and watched them from cover. The kid looked totally spaced out.
There had to be something wrong with him. He was docile, staring into space.
More than something wrong with the kid, there was something wrong with the
whole picture. Big Man had Boy positioned directly ahead of him to hug the kid
close. One arm reached over his shoulder and held Boy’s chest, pushing him
back, pushing their bodies together. Paul realised they were rocking side to
side, grinding, as though Big Man was rubbing his genitals on Boy’s ass.

“If you’re going to do that,” Paul whispered, “do it
with a girl on the dance floor.”

It was wrong. Very wrong. Big Man looked around thirty
years old, Boy looked twelve, no more than fourteen. There was always the
chance that Big Man was the kid’s father, in which case the close hugging would
seem affectionate, especially as the kid looked mentally vacant.

Big Man stroked his hand over Boy’s chest.

He wasn’t the kid’s father. This was sexual and it
made Paul feel sick. The kid looked like a victim. Big Man was a predator. And
there wasn’t a damn thing he would do about it. He had to get back into the
apartment without causing trouble and that was difficult enough.

Every tower block had four or five steps up to the
main entrance and Big Man was holding boy at the top of the stairs to the block
directly opposite Paul’s. No more than twenty feet from his front door. Here in
Noua, kids standing on the entranceway seemed the equivalent of British kids
hanging out in the streets. He’d noticed this just looking through the window,
but Big Man and Nealla weren’t kids; they shouldn’t be hanging around in the
streets. The thought occurred that they might be drug dealers which could
explain the weird behaviour he saw when they tried to hide something the
previous day; perhaps it was drugs. For someone as batshit crazy and violent as
Nealla, it was probably a fair career choice.

“How do I get inside?”

Just go for it. Walk straight and firm, get into the
building, don’t look over.

No sooner he emerged from behind cover than Big Man
was turning his face towards him. Paul ignored the gaze but watched Big Man
raise his hand above his shoulder and rap his knuckles on the door behind him.
A moment later and that door opened for Nealla to step outside.

Nealla saw him immediately and jauntily hopped down
the steps to approach.

“Oh, fuck.”

Paul’s jeans and shoes were soaking wet. He didn’t
want a confrontation, but he especially didn’t want one looking like he’d
fallen in a river. “Stick with the plan... stick with the plan... stick with,
oh fuck!”