Hello all - long (way to long) time no see! Now as you may know to be qualified for the watty rewards this needs to be done by the 31st. Now I've been working really hard and plan to meet that goal. so expect a chapter-a-day until the 31st. Don't forget to vote and check back daily - I would love this to be in the top 15 again for the remainder of the month, that way its fresh in everyones mine when voting starts.
Eight hours passed before Lilly finally spotted the rushing mob of vehicles trying to escape Russia. But she was in no rush to meet up with its leader Sir Kelton. It was obvious the vehicles were not in danger at the moment. They were, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. She doubted that the Russian government was even after Kelton. Most likely they were investigating the crash and death of the president with his closest officials about an hour out of St. Petersburg and that couldn’t be further away from the Kazakhstan boarder the caravan was rapidly approaching.
Darkness covered Lilly like a blanket; they had moved south enough to be out of the snow covered tundra so everything was dark. Lilly moved her hands away from her side and arched them out as if to hug the thin air in front of her. But she didn’t hug the air. A person appeared in her arms. Twigs snapped off the branches of a leafless shrub just under the clutched pair as Lilly whispered into the ear of the person she refused to let go, “Oh, how I missed you Sean.”
“Mistress,” he grunted back as he wrapped his arms around her to return the comfort.
She lifted her head up and rested it on his shoulder. She didn’t want to let go, she didn’t want this moment to end, but knew it had to. Lilly had grown even fonder of Sin over their extended separation. She hadn’t seen Sin since that day she met him in the bathroom just after she bit herself. She was so cold to him back then—disgusted with what she did to him. She never knew their disconnection would drag on for almost a month. She regretted not holding him tight back then, not getting the comfort she could before he vanished from sight.
“I haven’t seen you for so long.” She spoke from her spot on his shoulder.
Sin tilted his head and rested it on top of hers, “I yearned to see you again my Mistress. Has everything I done been to your desire?”
He sounded like a brainwashed robot, his emotions were there—but buried under his innate need to please Lilly. She didn’t like that. All she wanted now was someone to hold, someone to love, her dominating ideal from before had deeply changed—as the saying goes—shit happens. She didn’t want a follower anymore, she wanted a partner. “Be my partner, my lover.” She whispered, tightening her grip on his waist and pushing her cheek against his neck.
Almost as if his programming changed his tense body relaxed at the new order. His hold on her went from trying to comfort her back to a genuine hug. “Anything for you,” his voice was kind and lost the ‘I’m speaking to a leader’ vibe in it. But still, programed to do what she wanted, it was downright bothersome, nothing she could do about it now.
She lifted her head up and pulled away from the hug. After a few steps she looked up and down his body. He was wearing long blue jeans along with a short sleeve black shirt. Wherever he came from it must have been warmer. She noticed several bumps up and down his arms. The next to freezing temperatures of the Russian night had even his cool body shaking. But he made no motion to shield himself from the cold.
She took particular notice of the pointer finger on his left hand, more so the sparkling silver blade that replaced his finger, that was just darkened skin when she last saw him. His powers had finally evolved. She was curious how it worked. Lilly pointed at his hand, and he lifted it up for her to examine. He bent his finger up as she admired the now four inch shining blade. The blade was pointed but had two more curved points an inch from the top and an inch from that. It looked like it was not only designed to cut, but also to shred. Dangerous indeed. She grabbed his arm with her left hand and lifted her right up, as if to touch the tip of the blade.
Sin stopped her, “No, it is very sharp. I don’t want you hurt,” so instead of touching it Lilly squeezed on his arm and slashed it down at the shrub below them. It sliced several branches cleanly off with ease—no resistance. When she was done she let go of his hand and her lowered it down next to his side once more, “Anyone I cut with it dies a bloody death. It’s like anyone who gets cut with your fangs dies… blood loss. Even small cuts can be deadly.”
“Ghouls?”
“No, none, they just die.”
“Interesting… I want you to stay close for now on, I want to see you more often my dear Sin.”
“Anything for you,” he let loose a quick grin.
“Sir Kelton is expecting an attack but doesn’t know that Russia is in no position to start one. Can you be a dear and be the attacker?”
Sin looked down at himself. Lilly noticed he currently had no weapons on him. Then he said, “Why yes I can.”
“The weapon warehouse should still have some useable guns in it.”
Sin raised his eyebrows and looked into her eyes, “I know,” he moved his lips close to her. She was surprised of this—before Sin would never do such a thing as even attempt a kiss. She closed in on him and gave a quick kiss on the lips before jumping into smoke. Time to reunite with Sir Kelton.
Sin remained a moment longer, satisfied with the quick kiss before he too disappeared.
Lilly reappeared in the back seat of a military grade hummer that was stolen from the Operation Building. Sir Kelton was sitting in the seat next to her. “Did I miss anything?” Lilly asked.
Sir Kelton turned towards her not a least bit surprised with her appearance and said, “No. Did you do it?”
“Yes, I did it—killed him and all his associates.”
“Good. You know your job now – protect this caravan and all the people in it from attempted attacks. The closer we get to the boarder the more dangerous it will get.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lilly brushed him off as if the job wasn’t too important. It was late now and she hadn’t slept since the night before, all this killing had her busy. She was tired. So instead of sitting around with the bossy leader she vanished, only to reappear in the covered truck bed of a vehicle three behind Sir Kelton’s. The passengers riding in the cab turned around at the noise of her landing. She knocked on the back window of the moving truck and it was opened. “I’m tired, I’m going to sleep, don’t bother me,” she may of caressed the driver and two passengers with her aura a bit—but she didn’t care. She just wanted some sleep.
***
Two more days passed—the slow moving caravan was going at around twenty to thirty miles per hour. The risk of taking main roads was high—so it was vouched that even with the longer duration, taking the dirt side roads would be better off. Lilly did do an occasional scout around the vehicles, just to make Sir Kelton happy, but other than that she just traveled in the back of various vehicles just like the rest of the men. Sir Kelton didn’t want her taking off anywhere.
The caravan only stopped for five hours from around four am to nine am, mostly for the sake of the vehicles and not the people controlling them. The early morning was light, so an attack would be easily sighted and it was still early enough that most of the surveillance wouldn’t be up to par. According to Kelton it was a perfect time to let the cars rest and let him men take small naps or stretch their legs and eat something more than canned food kept cool by the chilly air.
She was surprised with how well these men faired during the long journey. She remembered being younger and going absolutely insane during a four hour car ride to the desert. It looked as if these soldiers were used to long, slow, dirt road trips. As a matter of fact, they probably had to make this journey to get all the way North of Perm to the Operation Building in the first place.
Lilly was glad Sin knew her well. It was as if he read her thoughts. Well, he probably did. She wanted a break, no needed a break. After the harsh orders of Nikon with his non-stop mission after mission with no break attitude she was worn out and was in great need of a break, one Sin gladly gave her. Sir Kelton didn’t have any standing orders, as a matter of fact after the murder of the Russian president and the quick chat with him that followed she hadn’t heard a word from him. He was giving her space to breathe, something Nikon would have never dared to give her.
Now it was about two more hours until the border with Kazakhstan. The sun was beating down on the quickly transforming terrain. It still remained around the low to mid fifties as a high but that was a considerable change to the subzero temperatures of North Russia. Today was going to be a good day.
***
Three thousand feet and closing. It had taken Sin the last two days to prepare this. Seventy five strategically placed guns were located in various areas around the hillsides overlooking the road Lilly was sure to pass. The weapons ranged for assault rifles, to fully automatics, to long range rifles. Over two million dollars in stolen weaponry and bullets laid scattered in the woods. He was currently parked the furthest away from the incoming cars. The long range rifle locked and loaded. Each one of these heavy bullets would have gone for over four thousand dollars on the black market, the gun, just under four hundred thousand. It was a masterpiece, one taken from a high security vault underground off the coast of England. He was sure the collector wouldn’t miss it.
The beauty of this gun, The Dedburtealizer, was it being completely computer generated with automatic targeting. It left the need for a spotter behind. This gun will auto calibrate, aim, and hit the target with a ninety seven percent accuracy. Moving target, wind, blocking terrain? It almost didn’t matter. It was simply an amazing piece of weaponry.
Looking though the scope he used to small touchpad to guide his target. He planned to launch the one pound bullet at the front windshield of the first car with a terminal velocity of ten thousand feet per second. Just the pure force and speed will cause considerable damage. The firing sequence was then set to hurl ten shots after he pulls the trigger the first time with ten different target locations.
Three seconds until visibility. Two, one. A military grade Hummer appeared from around the small hill that was previously blocking his view. Sin squeezed the trigger. An automated voice came from the gun. “Stand clear, firing in three, two, one.” Sin backed away—it fired. Such brute force, such gorgeous precision, such deadly aim. When the Dedburtealizer went off flame exploded out of both the front of the six foot barrel and the rear where its exhaust was. Launching such a large bullet at such velocity took its toll—it was impossible to be near this weapon when it went off—the force coming out of it with each shot could kill a gunner with ease.
***
Lilly was thrown out of her cat nap as the sound of smashing glass and twisting metal ripped through the crisp air. Shortly after the noise was another enormous crash as the car traveling behind the lead Hummer slammed into it. She smiled with her black eyes glistening. It started—and Sin made sure to start it off with a bang. Before she was even able to jump out of the vehicle to pretend to fight the enemies a machine gun went off to her left from atop the cliff. The bullets bounced off the side of the truck she was in and several holes speckled through the canopy covering the truck bed.
As that gun continued to spray blindly into the caravan another went off on the other side of the caravan and more bullets sprayed down onto the confused soldiers. She was impressed with how well Sin set this up. It was almost as if there were multiple people hiding in the woods. She jumped out of the truck as a large bullet from the front smashed into the side of the stalled second Hummer. Very effective.
Lilly appeared in front of Sir Kelton—he was already frazzled from the attack and shouting out orders to counter. That wouldn’t work for Lilly—if the soldiers went too far up the hills they would find this to be what it is—a fake. A spaying gun came from a third location and bullets flung across the dirt inches in front of her and Kelton. She quickly said, “I’ll take care of them. Give me a good gun.”
It wasn’t long before Lilly had a fully automatic, extended magazine, Glock 17. A beauty of a gun, sixty bullets per clip and fires it all in about two seconds if the trigger is held down. She jumped with this new gun off into the forest—towards the sound of the ‘Russians’.
***
Lilly was quick, she jumped though the light brush on the hills and fired quick bursts of the fully automatic pistol at trees or rocks. She smiled when her aim was right on, ignoring the few shots that missed—she’d never gone for long range attacks before, most the ones she did were within a few feet, no skill needed there. Finally Lilly approached the first gun in the hills. It was a machine gun, the rate of fire was slow and a long line of loose bullets fed into the gun as it fired around one to two per second.
The aim on the gun swayed with the tree it was connected to every time it fired. The trigger was held down by a string, all Sin had to do was pull the pin holding it back and everything else was done by itself. Very creative. Lilly fired a quick burst—three bullets, and pulled at the string holding the trigger down snapping it. The gun stopped. Lilly jumped towards the other side of the valley—to two other machine guns that were probably set up to do the same.
Just as the first gun Lilly shot a few times and cut the string stopping the gun from firing. After the next two guns were stopped the forest went quiet. Now it was time to put on the show. “Come out, come out wherever you are!” Lilly mused into the forest. Sin appeared from behind a tree, he had guns, and a lot. Lilly went over the instructions in her head, making sure Sin felt them as well. She had to pretend to put up a huge fight in the forest. She knew the General and his men below would hear the fight. Then Sin was to shoot her with one of his lower caliber pistols. Then Lilly would return wounded and the caravan would have to move on—though the “Russian” filled death trap. They won’t be able to kill Sir Kelton but she thought that it would help if most the men loyal to him were to die today—if that happened he might be more, encouraged, to free her.
Sin pulled a carbine out first and fired it. The semi-automatic gun hit a nearby tree. At the same time he pulled out a high caliber pistol and shot it at the ground. Lilly jumped towards Sin and reappeared upside down above him—she gave him a light kiss on the forehead as she soared over him before jumping and landing on her feet behind him. She fired the fully automatic pistol at a tree. Eight bullets blasted out in a quarter of a second.
***
Sir Kelton sucked in the few seconds of silence and his men halted their firing blindly into the woods. Maybe she got them all? He accounted the damage—both the lead vehicles were totaled. The driver and front passenger of the lead hummer were dead and the single other passenger was critically injured, whiplash from the collision. One more was killed from the second hummer by a stray bullet and three more men injured throughout the caravan—none serious. By the time the firing had stopped four of the twenty two vehicles he was in charge of were disabled and the mess the first two made left only enough room for the remaining vehicles to pass—one at a time. It was a bottleneck for sure.
His men quickly got the injured into the back of the remaining trucks and waited. The distant pops of a carbine went off up the hill next to them. Then a pistol went off—quickly after the familiar sound Lilly’s pistol as well. A few seconds of silence. Then the popping carbine again, followed by a fully automatic machine gun. The machine gun was silenced by the sound of Lilly’s pistol blasting out another four bullets with a sudden halt and click, it was empty. The fight seemed to move closer to the stopped vehicles. Another machine gun went off followed by yet another. Lilly’s pistol went off but the machine guns continued. Short bursts of her pistol crashed through the forest as the fight moved closer. Sir Kelton barked out to prepare for attack and his soldiers quickly fortified themselves behind the Hummers and trucks prepared for confrontation.
A third machine gun was heard and a semi-automatic pistol. Two of the machine guns stopped—Lilly’s pistol shouted a long two second spree—the entire sixty bullet clip. A very loud revolver went off and the last machine gun went quite. The sound was now just a few feet from the vehicles—how could they not see their attackers yet? The revolver went off a second time and a pistol shortly after. Soon after another carbine went off—now the noise was more towards the center of the stopped vehicles. What the hell was going on?
***
Lilly loaded her fourth and final clip for the fully automatic pistol and Sin dropped an empty machine gun. Her revolver was in her other hand and was ready to be fired. She jumped for Sin who had a picked up a conveniently placed fresh carbine and had a half used machine gun in the other hand. Once up against his chest she whispered, “That was fun. Now, do it.” The machine gun dropped from his hand and Lilly pressed her lips against his for much longer that their first kiss a couple days ago. As she absorbed the warmth and smoothness of his lips he pulled a single-fire four inch pistol out of his pocket.
Lilly held one of her arms out behind him and held down the trigger of the fully automatic. The full sixty bullets roared out of the gun for a second time in two seconds. The second her gun ran out of ammo the small pistol shot. Pain seared through her arm causing her lips to separate from his as the point-blank gun blew a hole straight through her arm. She couldn’t help but to let out a scream as she jumped back down to the vehicles.
Her exit was rough—she accidently threw herself out of the jump at the side of one of the Hummers. The pain dulled her senses and ability to even complete a decent jump. Her blood scattered against the side of the Hummer as the fully Glock 17 was hurled into the sky out of her tight grip. Several machine gun bullets spayed down some missing her by only a few inches. She quickly jumped again and this time threw herself right into Sir Kelton who was pressed up against a truck near the front. She grazed his side and crashed into the truck. Frantic and in pain she held her arm tight and managed to say, “I killed a lot, there are so many, way too many. Hundreds, thousands, we have to get out of here!” She started breathing real hard and cringed as a wave a pain from her shoulder and the gun wound made her vision almost completely blacken out. “They knew about me, we got to go, fast.” She cringed again as blood ran feely down her arm.
Sir Kelton looked into the hills. Then down at his super weapon. “You couldn’t kill them all?”
“The American president sent me after a three hundred person heavily armed fort, I got shot three times, my arm torn up by an explosion and sucked into hell with a second near-death experience.” She squeezed her eyes shut as a third wave overcame her body. When the wave ended she continued, “At this point, that three hundred would have been easy.”
Sir Kelton got the hint. “Damn!” he roared, “Get into the vehicles we’re making a run through this valley—prepare for battle!” he shouted down stopped line. He then turned to the two soldiers who were hiding behind the truck him and Lilly were now against and gave another order—this one in a quieter and friendlier voice. “Help her into the back on this truck—and give her medical attention for that gunshot and her shoulder.”
Lilly felt herself being pulled up by a pair of arms and lightly thrown into the back of the truck as the engine roared to life. Gunfire went off in the hills as the truck started moving. Under all the pain she smiled—the plan worked perfectly.
The vehicle started with a sudden jolt and roared forward, the driver jamming down the pedal as fast as possible. Dirt was thrown into the air and drifted into the back of the truck. Lilly coughed as the dirt filled the air while the truck swerved around the wreckage and cringed at every little bump the truck hit. A voice was nearby, most likely a man—mostly likely the medic in the back of the truck with her. She felt pressure against the bleeding gunshot wound as a second hand pushed against several of her ribs. “You have a few broken ribs,” the voice said in an oddly feminine voice. The medic was a woman. Lilly would have never guessed from the coarse feel of the fingers against her bare skin. The sleeve was cut and ripped off her arm and a needle was injected into it. An almost instantaneous numbing sensation expanded out from the needle prick and several surgical tools were pulled over her face for just a moment before they vanished. The dust had settled now, but the bumps didn’t.
In all the pain Lilly smiled, she’s been shot at least five times now, and this was the first time she was actually awake for the repair of the wound. Distant gunfire went off followed by a not-so-distant explosion. The heat from the explosion bellowed over the truck she was in as a rocket made direct contact with the vehicle behind them. The sudden swerve and bounce from the exploding vehicle behind them threw the medic off guard and away from Lilly. The cameo covering the truck made it hard to see what was going on, but whatever was happening Sin was doing a damn good job—she just wished he didn’t fire so darn close anymore.
Lilly lifted her head and looked at the progress of the wound clean-up. To her shock there was an awful lot of blood. A deep gash that exposed the bone stuck out from the small gun wound. She could see bone! And it’s not the bone from her fingers!. The medic recovered from her fall and quickly went up over the wound. Lilly heard a silent “Shit,” from the medic as she noticed the sudden crash caused the medic to actually slice Lilly’s arm further—a sensation Lilly couldn’t feel due to the anesthetic.
The medic worked even faster and Lilly started to feel light-headed. The truck hit a large pothole slamming down then back up. The medic slid again, but held her ground with a large slippery screech, her boots sliding in the blood pooling up in the truck bed. Shortly after some metal tools clinked on the floor and white gauze was quickly pulled from the medic’s pack.
The gunfire outside got worse, it sounded as if at least ten guns were going off at once. Lilly heard some return fire shot blindly into the woods as another exploded filled the air—this time a bit further from the truck she was in.
After some frantic stitching the gauze was tightly wrapped around her arm and the medic went, without slowing, down to try and assess the painful broken ribs. Thirty minutes of the on and off gunfire and explosions continued before the medic was finished working on Lilly’s ribs. For the ribs there wasn’t much that could be done with the exception of counting the number of fractures and painfully popping one back into place.
The medic concluded that after throwing herself twice into vehicles while exiting jumps Lilly broke three of her ribs and a finger.
The rough dirt road went solid and dust was no longer thrown into the air. They finally hit the start of the paved road, if Lilly was told correctly that means they were only around thirty minutes from the boarder, and mostly likely out of the madness of gunfire. Ten minutes passed on the smooth solid road when suddenly gunfire exploded from one of the sides. The bullets penetrated the truck she was in. Several holes were blown through the cameo cover over the truck—one bullet landing neatly in the back of medic who was leaning over Lilly.
Lilly was shocked, confused. Bullets weren’t supposed to go into the truck—Sin knew that! She was in it. Anger built up in her body and pulsed out to dominate everyone in the truck and reaching far out to Sin. A whimpering cower replied to her anger and just as fast as it built up her temper cooled down. Sin didn’t do this.
The medic fell forward with the bullet lodged in her back, landing on Lilly. Her now limp body pushed painfully against Lilly’s broken ribs. Lilly felt the wet blood run over her legs and the quick spurts of warm air blowing over her neck but warm air stopped after less than a minute, the medic was dead.
Lilly was trapped under the body and she had lost too much blood to push it off. Twenty more minutes passed—luckily without any more gunshots. Finally after way-to-long of agonizing silence the truck slowed for a moment and she heard the driver talking to someone—it then sped up again. It was full speed for another fifteen minutes before the truck slowed and pulled to a side of the road.
Once stopped the driver door opened and slammed it shut again. A few second later the trunk was opened and light shined into the back end. The single man looking into the truck saw the mixed dried blood pooled up in the bed and the dead medic still on top of Lilly, who was breathing very slowly due to the pain of the weight on top of her, “Come on, I’m going to get you out of here.” He said.
The man pulled the body slowly off Lilly and out of the truck. He heaved it out and dropped it on the ground only to come back to Lilly right after, fragilely lifting her up, he was able to sustain her entire body weight in his arms as he carried her around the vehicle. “I’m glad at least one person is okay,” the man said as Lilly’s head dropped over his arm and her hair dangled down. She looked up at the blue sky—she never thought being in that dark trunk bed would be such a nightmare—she was glad it finally was over, she was glad the sunlight was burning against her face. “We were told to go ahead, to protect you—the rest stayed at the border to fight the Russians. We didn’t want them following.”
Fight the Russians? There was never supposed to actually be any Russians. It must have been them at the end of the road shooting—they really did set up an attack. The man holding Lilly walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. An arm reached out from under Lilly and the man holding her pulled a body out from the passenger side. The passenger was killed too. Lilly was set down across half of the seat and the driver walked to the back. Lilly the back door slam shut. Afterwards he ended up on the driver side once more and she saw him brushing the glass off the seat—it looked like the bullet went through the driver window and hit the passenger.
The driver closed the door on his side and it went quite for a moment. Lilly felt the sun burning against her skin and struggled to find something at the foot of her seat to try and spread across her face, the sun was getting uncomfortable. After the driver filled the gas tank with one of the large tanks in the back of the truck he re-appeared at the driver door and hopped into the truck. The engine started up again and the driver looked down at Lilly. He pointed to himself. “I’m Alle.”
“The sun,” Lilly tried a little harder to cover her face with the tiny rag—that wasn’t doing too well.
Alle’s jacket came off without hesitation and was carefully laid over Lilly’s upper body and face. Alle then went a step more and pulled her head carefully up until she was spread across the front seat and her head was in his lap. Lilly could feel the truck moving again soon after. She almost instantly felt better. The sun was no longer on her bare skin, her stretched out body mellowed the pain from the broken ribs, and Alle’s lap acted not only as safety but as comfort as well. Lilly felt a hand brush through her hair as the truck drove further and further away from the hostile border fight.