Vampire Unleashed (Vampire Untitled Trilogy Book 3) Page 2

  Paul left the banker and took a moment to look down onto Lake Skhodra. It glistened with a trillion sparkles. The main villa had a huge plate window that looked onto the lake. Ill-gotten wealth could barely have been spent on a more beautiful view.

  “I wish I could show you this, Ildico,” he whispered. “One day I might. One day I might take you away from your troubles and fill your world with beauty.” The thought of being the one to do that, to bring her happiness, to enrich her life, was a daydream worthy of a few minutes. He closed his eyes for a few seconds then opened them to see the back of Ildico’s head as she stood in front of him, looking down onto the blue lake. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it Ildico?” She didn’t answer. Her hair caught in the breeze and blew to the side showing her neck and ear. How nice it would be to see her face. It would be wonderful if she smiled.

  The almost imperceptible sound of the ankle shackle broke the daydream. From behind, Paul sensed Dukanovic bending over to examine the steel around his leg and when he turned he found him in the pose as surely as if he had eyes in the back of his head. Dukanovic froze in a half stoop, too afraid to move further.

  Paul returned to him, took the folded chair and continued to the bend in the road.

  A second length of steel cable was already prepared and hidden by the roadside. He checked the cable and rolled it out to rest loosely across the road. He would wait until the Gjokeja’s passed, then he would reel it in and hook it to a brace around a tree trunk to form another roadblock behind their car. They would be trapped in a killzone.

  “I hope this works, Ildico,” he mused. “I really hopes this works.” Christ in heaven, this could all go fucking pear shaped. What if they got out of the car and ran in different directions? He needed them together.

  “I’m going to need all of your help, Ildico. I’m going to need you with me for this.”

  Two hours…

  The Gjokeja’s would be two hours at the minimum if everything went according to plan. Of course their movements were guesswork, but there was no reason to believe they would break from Dukanovic’s instructions.

  “I need your help Ildico. Please. Send me your help for what I’m about to do.”

  He retreated into bushes and unfolded the chair. Through the foliage of the hide he could see the banker standing idle in the road and he could see the route the Gjokeja’s would have to approach by.

  Now he would wait.

  A wasp buzzed around his head. He swatted it away.

  Wait…

  Waiting…

  It took three hours.

  He heard the car long before he saw it. The engine getting steadily louder.

  “Please, Ildico, protect me from harm. I’m coming for you, Ildico. Protect me.”

  The roadblock cable was tied off with twine and in Paul’s hands it suddenly felt too thin. His hands were sweating.

  This was it.

  The engine got louder.

  There was no turning back.

  Paul looked through the foliage. Dukanovic, baking in the sun and sweating, was suddenly erect and alert. He’d heard it too.

  “Don’t rush,” he whispered to himself. “Let them pass.”

  He made a conscious decision to put the sword on the floor beside him, then rethought the strategy and got off the chair entirely so he could rest on one knee.

  “Be with me, Ildico. Help me. Help me succeed.”

  The car came into view.

  “Protect me Ildico…”

  This was it.

  “This is for you and the baby.”

  A fine trail of sandstone dust flowed from the tyres as the car passed.

  Paul yanked the twine too harshly, too much haste and eagerness. He wound in the cable and grabbed the carabiner on the end of the roadblock. He pulled it toward the tree trunk. It took all of his strength to pull it taut.

  He heard the car wheels grinding against sandstone, the tyres skidding in dust.

  He linked the carabiner to the metal hoop making a barrier behind the car.

  He had them. He had them locked in an attack box.

  Paul grabbed the sword and pushed out of the bush.

  The car had stopped.

  The banker was pointing at him, screaming a warning to the Gjokejas. The passenger side door opened and a huge man with sunglasses and thick grey hair leapt out. It was Erjon, the biggest and oldest of the brothers. He threw his arm across the roof of the car and a flash of light burst from his fist with a bang.

  The bullet flew wildly to the side.

  Paul ducked low, using the position of the car to his advantage, closing in as he obscured himself below the vehicle. Erjon fired again and again. His weapon making a pop-pop-pop sound with the shots but the angle was too awkward.

  The engine revved and the car rushed backward throwing up a cloud of yellow dust. The rear door opened to a narrow crack to reveal the second brother, the thin and wiry Lorik Gjokeja who began shooting through the gap in the door. He was closer, he had direct line of sight.

  The situation slowed…

  Slowed further…

  Slow like a snail…

  Paul could see everything. He could see Erjon move away from the car to the left. He could see shockwaves of yellow lines travelling from Erjon’s chest and shoulder, down his arm to the gun in his hand. The gun wasn’t aimed well and on each trigger pull Erjon tilted his weapon one or two degrees to the right. The shot would miss by a mile. Lorik was the danger. It was Lorik he needed to evade. Paul darted right to get behind the car, thinking he could shield himself, but bullets shattered through the back window, blowing the blackened glass into silvery cobwebs.

  Ahead of him, Erjon’s gun locked as he fired his last shot, he went for a spare clip. Paul ran hard and fast towards him. Erjon pressed the button to release the empty magazine. Paul readied his sword. The magazine escaped the gun and fell through the air as Paul stabbed through Erjon’s flank and all the way out through his liver. He saw an explosion of electrical energy shoot through the man’s nervous system as yellow lines of pain rushed from the wound. He twisted the sword as he withdrew it and swung it once with a two handed grip, cutting Erjon’s sunglasses in two across the bridge and leaving a deep wound to his face.

  A shot came from the car, this time bursting through the front window.

  The car was picking up speed in reverse. Erjon was going down slowly, toppling forward as he gripped his side. The car rolled backwards until it hit the roadblock. The effect was undramatic. The car stopped, the treetops shrugged on impact. Lorik opened the back door, got out and backed away whilst pointing the gun in defence. The driver’s door opened. Aldo, the third and final Gjokeja brother tried to get out but Paul slashed across his face and aimed at his throat before he could even clear the doorway.

  A bullet hit the windscreen. The whole pane of glass frosted into tiny cubes. The shot came from behind, from Erjon.

  Paul went for Aldo a second time but the door obscured him, he tried to stab across it and got him solidly in the chest, but the man grabbed the blade and fell back into the car, taking the sword with him.

  Another shot from behind. Erjon was on his side, blood pouring from his face. Immobile but still dangerous, he’d managed to reload and continue shooting.

  Another shot, this time from the far side.

  Lorik, the second gunman.

  Paul was trapped between two shooters. He’d lost the sword.

  He watched Lorik aim the gun. He saw the electrical impulses cascade down his arm. It was going to be tight. Paul pulled his body harshly to the floor, trying to take cover behind the wing of the car.

  The shot whizzed past his ear as Lorik stumbled backwards and tripped over the roadblock. He fell flat on his back and ran his hands over his body to find the injury as to why he’d fallen. A mistake made in panic. He’d taken his eyes off the action.

  Paul rushed in, unlocking the karambit from his chest, the knife fitting into his fist, the tiger claw protruding from the botto
m of his hand. The first blow was a punch across the nose, the blade slashing Lorik’s cheek, mouth and tongue. The return slash hit his throat. Lorik had already dropped the gun and now tried to push his hands out in defence, but there is no protection against a karambit at close range. Paul aimed a punch at his bloody maw and felt the hooked blade slice down the forearm and into the muscle running a cut from wrist to armpit as deep as the bone.

  It went still.

  Erjon had stopped shooting. He was laying serenely like a drunk who had passed out in the street. The car engine had stopped. Below him he felt Lorik softening as his muscles relaxed into death and suddenly noticed the powerful smell of the man’s cologne. Blood was pooling around his chest and head and his skin was going paler by the second.

  Three armed men.

  Three dead men.

  He wiped the karambit on his cargo pants and locked it back into the holster, then checked himself for injury. Not a scratch.

  He surveyed the area and listened to the stillness.

  Dukanovic was still chained to the roadblock. His arms by his side, his expression stupefied.

  Paul went to the car first.

  The driver, Aldo, was slouched with his forehead resting on the steering wheel, the sword skewered through his chest. Blood dripped off his nose like a leaky faucet. On the back seat was a metal box, Paul popped the catches and opened it.

  Money.

  An incredible amount of money.

  Thick packets of bank notes with paper bands around the wads of cash. In the boot he found another metal box holding mixed currency of Euros, US dollars, Swiss francs and small credit card sized pieces of clear plastic containing wafers of gold. There were documents here also, perhaps they were of value too. The gold was stamped .999 Fine Gold, One Troy Ounce, and the plastic cards bore serial numbers and holograms of authenticity. How much was an ounce of gold worth? No matter, in paper currency alone he must have a fortune between the two boxes.

  He left the car and walked towards the banker.

  “You said you would let me go!” the man shouted in a strained voice. “You made a promise. Please. You remember? I know you keep your promises. Good men keep their promises.”

  Paul walked closer. He withdrew the karambit.

  “Please,” Dukanovic pleaded. “Please, please you promise. You tell me you will let me go.”

  Paul took him down in the fastest and most painless way he knew. The move was called a noose. In a split second he’d grabbed Dukanovic’s head and pulled it forward whilst punching fast along the side of his neck to slice through the carotid artery.

  Down in a second, unconscious in less than a minute, dead in five.

  Then it was still.

  ----- X -----

  ROMANIA

  Corneliu Latis parked his car in the courtyard behind the apartment blocks and relaxed into his seat. Noua was a shithole of communist era tower blocks, peeling paint and dirt tracks. It was the worst district of Brasov and the cheapest, meaning it was full of Roma gypsies and the poorest Romanians. He checked his watch, just before nine in the morning and it was already getting hot. Today would be a scorcher. He rubbed his hand across his face and traced the lines of his scars with a fingertip. Thick, deep wounds of purple lines with suture marks across his cheeks and nose. He had a face that made children cry.

  “Let me see you,” he said to himself.

  She was usually out by nine thirty.

  “Today, I guess you’re going to the picnic area,” he said. “Judging by the weather and the fact that it’s a Thursday.”

  If she didn’t go to the picnic area she would be going to her mother’s, but that was normally on a Sunday. Alternatively she would be going to the mini-market but it was most likely she did her grocery shopping after morning play with the baby. Her only other morning routine was to visit her doctor. Her routine would change if it was raining, in which case she didn’t come out unless she absolutely needed to; but her Thursday routine had become pretty predictable.

  She was a creature of habits and Cornel had learned them all.

  “There you are,” he mumbled as the familiar figure of Ildico Popescu backed out of the doors, pulling the pushchair with her child. Today she wore a white summer dress with a wide brimmed hat, her hair tucked underneath. She looked nice, like something from a postcard if the forest mountains were behind her. Less so whilst surrounded by dirty tower blocks.

  The lady Popescu took her child for a walk. Cornel followed on foot. He didn’t need to be close, he knew where she was going. He followed her through allotments, along a dirt track to cross the only road in the district that was surfaced. He let her get ahead into the picnic area whilst flanking and climbing the forested hill. He sweated, he grunted and panted as he made his way up the steep incline, he held onto tree trunks and pulled as much with his arms as pushed with his legs until high above her. When in position he sat behind a wide trunk to watch and unscrewed the cap to a fresh bottle of whisky. He took a big drink from the neck. Whisky was becoming his ruin. He was getting through a bottle a day, sometimes more.

  Ildico took the baby out of the pushchair to sit on the grass. They played a game of touching hands, the child’s giggles drifting just enough to be heard.

  It was interesting that she came to this place. To this picnic spot. Whilst there were few other nice places she could take her baby to play outside, it can’t have been unknown that this patch of ground was the site of a double murder. She knew the victims personally, Nealla and Raul. They had antagonised her, they had abused her physically and psychologically for years. Then Paul McGovern stabbed them to death on the very spot she now bounced her child on her knee.

  Interesting.

  Paul McGovern raped that girl and gave her the child, he then left the house, came here and killed two men; yet this was the place she came to smile and laugh and have fun with her rape baby? It would be nice to know why. It would be nice to scream at her, to threaten, to demand to know what hold Paul McGovern had over her. In his mind he could imagine punching her, grabbing her dress and screaming, “Why? Why? Why?”

  He didn’t want to hurt her.

  He was sure he didn’t want to hurt her.

  What he really wanted was to see Paul McGovern suffer. He wanted him caught, he wanted to read in a newspaper that McGovern was in prison. Even better he wanted to read how McGovern had died in a police shootout. He’d even dreamed of being the shooter, imagining being interviewed on television about how he had killed Paul McGovern.

  The fantasy was crushing him by its failure to materialise. Paul McGovern was a ghost. He had vanished. Cornel wanted the saga to be ended, but rather than end it had gone into perpetual limbo, leaving him to twist and squirm with a scarred and deformed face and a hollow existence.

  The mother and daughter below him laughed out loud. He wanted to go down there and shoot them both. Anything to hurt McGovern. It was all part of the proxy war that fought in his head. Somebody had to pay for the pain he lived in and if he couldn’t hurt McGovern directly then he would hurt the people he loved… or those who loved him.

  ----- X -----

  The stairs were dangerous for children and Ildico was taking them one at a time. Her hair had lost its gloss over the last year and looked flat and lifeless. Her milky skin was beginning to look haggard and dark rings had emerged under her eyes. Worse still, her slender figure had atrophied, changing her from slim and sexy to looking frail and anaemic. Single parenting had added twenty miserable years to her looks.

  “Unu, doi, trei,” she said counting the stairs to the baby balanced on her hip. “Can you count, Alina? One, two, three… One, two, three.”

  The baby was wrapped in a pale blue coat, the hood tied tight around her face. “Ooo, doo, tooo,” she gurgled.

  “Ooo, doo, too? No, Alina. It’s one, two, three.”

  She rolled the pushchair wheels down the steps. There was no elevator in this block, hence cheaper rents the higher you lived. Ildico had a s
ingle room on the sixth floor. It was the typical oppressive block, a prison-like structure of concrete staircases with iron banisters. The railings were badly designed and wide enough for a toddler to slip between, meaning she had to carry Alina up and down less she risk losing the child to communist architecture.

  At the foot of the stairs a man in a dark blue overcoat was searching mailboxes for a name. She smiled at him and prepared the pushchair. Alina was already standing with her hands in the air waiting to be lifted. The man took a letter and was about to post it in Ildico’s mail box.

  “Is that for Popescu?”

  “Yes,” the man replied. “Are you Ildico Popescu?”

  “I can take that.” She held her hand out for the letter but the man withdrew it. He handed over a business card.

  “My name is Iancu Petran. I have a letter for you, but could you show me some identification, please.”

  Ildico’s eyebrows dipped. She looked at the business card. Mr. Petran was a lawyer. She noticed how fine his clothes were; he was unusually well dressed for this district. She found her ID card.

  “That’s fine,” Petran said. “I have a letter and some keys for you.” He handed over the letter.

  It had her name on the envelope and said ‘To be opened by addressee only.’ The writing was in English. Her heart lurched. English… it was written in English. Petran produced two keys on a silver ring. He opened a small leather folio and produced a document. “Can you sign here please, to say you have received.”

  Ildico scratched her name but didn’t immediately take the keys, she was reading the english sentence on the envelope over and over again.

  She opened the letter, her hands shaking.

  Dear Ildico,

  I am sorry for all the hurt and pain I have put you through. Things were out of my control and I was powerless to stop it, but the responsibility is mine, I am the one to blame. You have done nothing wrong, yet must shoulder the greatest burden. I am so sorry for what I have imposed on you and would give anything to undo the pain I have caused.