Hi!
Didn't manage to post earlier... sorry, about that, but I'll keep trying! Thank you all so much for your support. Anna is on the brink of a major spell of trouble, and I'm itching to know what you're thinking! Thank you all for reading, and have a wonderful week!
Lara
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Chapter 39
It was a fact. The Force’s surveillance car felt stuffy and claustrophobic. Spelled devices, machines, and high tech equipment, no matter where the eye looked. Looked like the Circle had brought out the big guns this time. I stifled the urge to raise an eyebrow and tuned into Brown’s instructions again.
“We divided the area and set up three sections, moving in concentric circles,” Brown said, pointing at the map on the display of the computer. “This is the outer section, the third one, which holds members of our forces: the Force and TF3. If anybody with a hint of a vampiric aura comes close they’ll alarm everyone. Alexander is in charge of section number two, since the vampires are the ones most likely to be able to identify the bounty hunter. If the third section reports any sightings of the assassin, he and his vampires will go after him before he can even come close. Finally, there is the first section, the innermost circle. This is the immediate vicinity around Frank Currol. This one’s a bit of a problem. Initially I wanted to put more of our guards closer to the mayor. It seems that the New York police department, however, doesn’t approve of this.”
I nodded absently. It was an open secret that human forces, including the police and the FBI, were disinclined to cooperate with forces of the Circle. Besides, close protection of the mayor was the police’s job.
Brown, meanwhile, continued. “They refuse to let anyone guard Currol except for his team of bodyguards. I’ve been able to position one of our men in the entrance area of the lobby. Anna, I want you to go to the entrance and wait outside.” He pointed on the map again. “They’ll come out here to bring him to his car. I want you to make sure that he gets into that car safely. From there we will guard him with four cars of all the forces. He will be brought to one of the police’s training facilities. This is strictly human territory. Once he’s arrived there, there’s nothing we can do for him.”
* * *
I checked my watch again, sighing. When I first took up my position outside the Municipal building, a mini receiver in my ear, I felt very much like the female version of James Bond. But that was ten minutes ago. The insight that my position was not what one would call a vital strategic point had come and gone. In fact, I’d become reconciled with the idea of me at least being part of the rescue mission in some way.
So when it happened, I was completely and utterly unprepared for it. I heard it over the receiver.
“33. Code 10! Powerful vampire approaching! I repeat, powerful vampire approaching!”
I tensed. One of the witches positioned in the third section had sensed the aura of a vampire. Static crackled inside my ear like a miniature thunderstorm.
“31. Visual contact established!” I heard somebody else yell into the line.
I brought my hand up to the mini receiver, adjusting the earpiece. Alexander and his vampires were on the move, more than half of them leaving their posts to pursue the undead bounty hunter. Apparently it really was him.
Damn! I stared up and scanned the night sky. Nothing. Here I was stuck at the entrance to observe. Had I really choked Jack and a room waitress into unconsciousness for that?
The doors behind me opened. I turned around, snapping to attention. The moment had come. Frank Currol and his herd of police bodyguards finally were about to leave the building. The assassin was nowhere close to us, but I reached out into the night air, my senses stretched and on high alert.
Not high enough. I saw the bodyguard closest to Frank Currol fall milliseconds before I heard it. The gun-shot echoed fully through the night, bouncing off the walls behind us.
All hell broke loose. Shouting and panicked movement jerked the night around me into action. Sometimes you don’t think. You move. I flung myself in front of the group of bodyguards surrounding the mayor. I pulled on my magic. Vibrant and alive, a protective wall of air shot to the sky – up and around all of them. My eyes scanned the opposite building for the sniper. Dammit, the whole area had been cleared and secured to the nines, and the vamp assassin was still somewhere outside, so who the hell was shooting?
Harsh barks of an imperative nature struck through the air. Feet moving with adrenaline-tinged staccato rhythm. Someone kept pushing me forward, closer to the car. The team of bodyguards had accepted my intervention without protest, their guns already out, while others were ushering the dumbfounded politician to the car. I moved with them synchronously.
Flanked by bodyguards, the mayor reached the car, a luxurious Mercedes Benz. I ended up squeezed between one bodyguard and the mayor himself. The confusion was absolute. No one knew what was going on, and I had no idea what happened to the bodyguard that was shot. They couldn’t have left him there, right?
The car set into motion, burning rubber. The team of bodyguards was already in contact with Brown and the other forces, their voices agitated and loud. I looked out of the window, scanning the outside. We passed empty streets, the buildings and pavements a blur in my vision.
We were not more than four blocks from the building, when Frank Currol’s alarmed voice broke through the tensioned silence.
“David, what are you doing?”
My eyes followed his and I found myself staring at the front seat. The chauffeur had turned around, a gun in his hand. Crap.
That place deep inside of me flared an angry red as my magic pulsated and grew. Air manifested and cleared in front of us in the same moment the chauffeur shot. That was when the car began accelerating and we were rocked to the side violently. My concentration wavered, and the walls of air dissolved for a moment. The chauffeur raised his gun again. One of the bodyguards slapped it out of the driver’s hand, before knocking him out cold with one punch. The car accelerated and jerked to the side. The unconscious chauffeur’s foot was still on the gas pedal. The vehicle was about to veer off the street! My mind was hit with a road-train of adrenaline, thoughts shattering into a stirred up hornet’s nest of confusion and blurry impressions.
I don’t think I had a choice about this. I don’t think it was a conscious decision. I simply did it. I used advanced magic.
I went back into that place again, deep down there where layer up on layer of power and magic nestled. I dug my hand into it and felt the power surge. The air came willingly and freely, powerful and beautiful. An outer shield of protection snapped up, walls of air enfolding the car in cushioning safety. My mind envisioned the knitted particles of air, stabilizing the car with the action, steering it back onto the road. Finally I let the car come to a standstill at the side of the road.
Short moments of silence passed, the air in the car heavy with equal parts of wonder and mistrust. No one questioned what I did. No one even seemed to look at me. I stifled the urge to scowl. To them I was part of the freak show. I was tolerated as long as I helped them.
With a frightening and unexpected practicability the bodyguards finally stuffed the unconscious chauffeur into the trunk. After a change of driver we went on, continuing our escape to the institution Brown had referred to as the police’s training facilities.
We had not gone on for more than five minutes, moving on the interstate at full speed. Two things happened at once, tore me out of a false sense of security I had allowed myself to be lured into. A dull sound directly over us. Something heavy dropped onto the car’s roof, causing the car to rock to the side violently. The cars close to us were honking, an imperfect sound concert of annoyance. The people inside the car were yelling undistinguishable commands and exclamations. The new rush of adrenaline made my pulse speed up again. The driver, one of Currol’s bodyguards managed to bring the car back under control, but that didn’t solve the very real problem we had on top of our heads. Was it the assassin himself?
I closed my eyes and concentrated until the darkness was replaced by a world drenched in gray. Second sight slipped over my eyes like a rubber glove. The colors appeared, dancing vividly in my inner eye. Small translucent flickers. Human auras inside the car, except for one. Dammit, one of the bodyguards was a shape shifter! I widened my circle reaching out. Then in the middle of the sandstorm of gray and heavy translucence a spatter of black exploded. The presence appeared with a quickness that made me catch my breath. The aura was drenched in black, moving and slithering like oil in water. The aura of a powerful vampire.
The assassin. And he was on top of us.
“Sullens!?”
Again the mayor’s voice. I gave a start. Second sight slipped through my mental fingers. I blinked as reality slammed back into me. I followed his eyes and found that the bodyguard in the passenger seat – Sullens? – had opened the window.
“No! Don’t! That’s suicide!!!” I yelled.
He had his gun in his left hand, and with his back pushed to the dashboard he leaned out, taking aim. He had time to fire one shot before a white hand grabbed him by the throat. The bodyguards pointed their guns, aiming for the arm belonging to the hand.
The terror in Sullens’ widened eyes was naked and pure, but there was something else: a sense of knowledge. It was the knowledge, the absolute horror of death. Then he was drawn out of the car, his body vanishing from sight. The shots the bodyguards had fired milliseconds too late hit the car’s inner door shell. I screamed. The car swerved to the side. We were still going at full speed. One of the remaining bodyguards climbed to the front seat and closed the window hastily. A few moments of stunned silence followed.
I stared at the spot the bodyguard had occupied seconds ago and saw... My breath hitched and stuttered. Cold sweat, a sickening taste of decay and death exploding in my saliva. The glass was stained by two red tears making their way down diagonally. Blood. Sullens’ blood.
More images. Pictures of the vampiric bounty hunter feasting on him. Fabrications of my mind this time. They probably were close to the truth nonetheless.
The bodyguard who was driving, meanwhile, tried to shake off our attacker and swerved the car in slalom-like movement. Fear made my heart beat away angrily, sweat pooling in my palms and dusting the back of my nape. Damn it, where was the cool mind I needed for situations like these? Had we gotten rid of the monster? Were we going to die?
I may as well have been blindfolded for I couldn’t see anything from my position. I tried to center myself, doing my best to remember what I learned during my years in the Circle’s academy.
Drawing a long deep breath, I closed my eyes again to make use of my second sight. But no. There was still a dark aura directly above us. An ear-shattering, squeak-like sound drilled through the white noise of the engine. Second sight shimmied and wavered in front of my eyes. I froze, aware of the slight vibrations in the car. I realized what the vampire was trying to do: He was about to unhook the roof. He would open the car like a sardine can. Us being the sardines – ready for the feast.
I reclaimed full control over the world of auras and widened my circle, determined to follow the vampire’s movements. If worst came to worst, I was going to fight him as best as I could. That was when I felt them. A horde of dark auras riding through the night air like black, obsidian bullets. A formation of power, dark and sleek – just like the assassin’s. The speed with which they were approaching our car was too fast for human senses. The darkest and strongest of the auras was the first one to reach us. Before I knew it our attacker’s aura vanished from the car top and my radar. My head followed the remaining dark auras involuntarily, and my eyes flew open of their own. The vision of the real world flashed up, reversed colors and distorted proportions hitting me head on. Yeah, so letting go of second sight without meaning to still left me disoriented. So much to my glorious performance as a witch.
I was still trying to make sense of the world around me when I glimpsed some sort of movement at the side of the street. I narrowed my eyes, squinting. I thought I recognized the strongest aura of nothingness I had seen instants before. Could this have been Alexander and his group of vampires? I turned around, craning my neck. Damn. We were moving too fast for me to see anything!
Gradually I began to perceive the other passengers’ hysteric voices again.
“… happened?”
“Is he still there?”
“Faster! Floor it!!”
“I can’t go any faster, goddammit!”
When I spoke my voice sounded too loud in my ears. “He’s gone.”
Everybody turned to look at me. “How do you know?” One of the bodyguards said.
“I know because I felt him. Now he’s gone. There were other vampires … well, I don’t know what happened in particular, but he’s no longer on the roof – that much I can tell you for sure.”
I had to explain what I had done – and how I had done it – almost the whole way to our destination. By the time the police facility came into sight, I was anxious to get away from Frank Currol’s men. They were more than suspicious about my magical ‘abilities.’ I looked out of the window and my breath caught.
To me the so called ‘training facility’ looked more like a military base – in every single cliché-filled way. There were at least five control points within the surrounding area of the main building. The gray buildings were constructed with an apathy that was almost offensive to the eye, while the high security fence fortifying the whole area added to the sense of entering a war zone. Gray and metal went hand in hand; man-made materials, ominous and sleek in their appearance.
I got out of the car and turned, watching the open field of rocky, infertile land surrounding the facility. Barrenness against a landscape of deep green and moss in the far distance, where the edge of a dark, shadowy forest stretched far beyond eyesight.
Wordlessly, I followed the group of bodyguards, watching their broad backs in silence. I was torn out of my musing, when I heard the moaning of the chauffeur. I turned around in time to see him hauled out of the trunk by one of the bodyguards. Crap! They probably didn’t even know what had really happened in that car.
I approached him, addressing the bodyguard. “Wait! He’s been compelled. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Frank Currol, who was already being ushered towards the entrance of the building, stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. The bodyguards tried to keep him moving, but he refused, shrugging their hands off. Instead he walked up to me.
“What do you mean by this?”
I pointed to the only half-conscious chauffeur, the guard trapping him in a steely and probably painful grip.
“For how long have you known David – that was his name, right?”
Currol eyed me for a long moment, before he gave an answer. “At least seven years.”
I released the breath I had been holding. It confirmed my suspicions. I was pretty sure that I knew what had happened and how.
“I think the assassin compelled him. The Municipal Building was secured by the forces of all three races. Getting past witches, vamps and the police undetected?” I shook my head. “We know that he’s a powerful vampire. It was easy for him to simply compel your chauffeur. At some point in time this night he probably ordered him to shoot you.”
The bodyguards were watching me with hostile eyes. I could feel a wave of hatred roll off their bodies. Yeah, New York’s finest weren’t happy with me. I looked around, wondering where all the other cars were. Brown mentioned that four cars of all the forces would be guarding the vehicle with the mayor. I wouldn’t put it beyond the police to simply refuse to let the others into what they considered their own territory. I caught movement from the corner of my eye and got the answer to my unasked question. The rest of the bodyguard team had gotten out of another car that had apparently followed us all along. The only car in the police’s training facility beside ours. The men were closing in on us, about to watch the show. That alone should have made me shut my mouth, but I couldn’t let this go.
“I would advise all your personnel to wear holy items or crosses if they don’t do so yet. The crosses aren’t foolproof, but I heard it helps against vampiric mind-penetration and makes it harder for the vampires to get into your head.”
If you believe in God in the first place. I added mentally. The human belief in religion was a magic of its own and I couldn’t even begin to understand it.
One of the bodyguards sneered, apparently not liking my interference. “It’s standard procedure for us to wear crosses, witch!”
I let my mouth form a frosty smile that told him just what I thought of his behavior. “Well, to me it looks like the chauffeur was not familiar with the standard procedure, so I-”
I was interrupted by a deep voice coming from somewhere close to the building. “I suggest we have this discussion once you are all inside. Branton, Frandman! Quit standing around like a bunch of faggots! Bring the mayor inside. Now!”
I looked up and met the eyes of a salt-and-pepper-haired man that in all likelihood had long seen his fortieth birthday. A face that told tales of war, bloodshed, and a rigid sense of justice. A body posture and short haircut that screamed ex-military, though I was not so sure about the ex. He turned around without acknowledging me any further.
I trailed behind and followed inside reluctantly. I didn’t like the fact that I was the only magical being in the politician’s current entourage. Knowing that at least one of the bodyguards was a shape shifter was a poor consolation.