Chapter 24
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“Do something!” Tony yelled.
The two lab techs promptly suppressed their fears and took up fire extinguishers. They jumped to the task of dousing Razvan and Dumitra with liberal amounts of the container’s contents. Tony took a moment to see that the lab techs complied with his instructions. Several seconds later, he turned his attention to his two gunmen.
“Go after them!”
The gunmen setoff for the basement door at a run. The gunman with the shotgun was in the process of reloading as he went. The last of the flames on Razvan and Dumitra were extinguished by the time the two gunmen reached the top of the stairs. The lab techs then turned their attentions to the ancillary fires about the room. Once relieved of the flames, Razvan and Dumitra took several minutes to peel off the remnants of their burnt outer garments, wincing in pain from the effort of it. When his task was finished, Razvan angrily threw his suitcoat to the floor. He and Dumitra’s heads, arms and torsos were covered in burns. Tony was shocked by the sight of them, and even more surprised by Razvan and Dumitra’s tolerance for the injuries to their bodies. They appeared to be acting out of anger more than pain.
“Where are they?” Razvan barked out in fury.
Tony noted that Razvan kept his eyes tightly closed while frowning in agony as he spoke. During his wait for an answer, he made repeated attempts at opening his eyes despite the irritation within them. It was clear to Tony that Razvan was practically blind.
“Well!” Razvan shouted with impatience. “Where are they?”
The sound of Razvan’s shouts drew Dumitra to his side. Her eyesight appeared to be in the same condition as his. She rarely opened her eyes because of the pain and irritation that came with that act.
“They’re gone,” the gunman with the handgun shouted as he raced back into the basement.
The gunman with the shotgun raced in behind the first. They were breathing heavily from their exertion.
“Find them! And kill the girl,” Razvan ordered at the top of his lungs.
“They’re on the street,” the first gunman complained. “We can’t gun them down out in the open. She’s a cop!”
With a fierce grimace on his face, Razvan stepped over to where the first gunman was standing. He, in turn, inched backwards. Razvan grabbed the gunman by the shirt, lifted him off his feet and brought his face to within five inches of his own. Much of Razvan’s face was disfigured with burn injuries. His expression was furious and when he spoke, the uncharred features inside his mouth stood out in contrast to his outer features.
“Find them! I need that cop dead.”
Razvan tossed the gunman backwards after issuing his decree. The force of the shove caused him to fall to the floor. Razvan paused a moment to recover from the exhaustion of manhandling the gunman.
“They can’t be far. They’re on foot. Find them!”
The gunmen quickly looked to Tony for his approval. After a moment of thought, Tony gave them a nod of his head. The gunmen gave each other a knowing look then raced out the basement door and up the stairs in search of their prey. When the sound of their movements died away, Razvan turned his attention to what he could hear in the basement.
“Who else is down here?” Razvan questioned angrily.
“Just the chemists,” Tony answered with a hint of panic.
“Get them out,” Razvan ordered with a growl.
The lab techs listened to every word. They took off an instant after Tony waved them out. When they were halfway up the stairs, Tony turned his attention back to Razvan and waited for more instructions. There was silence for several seconds as Razvan and Dumitra continued to struggle with the irritation in their eyes.
“Damnit!” Razvan exclaimed angrily.
Razvan fumed over this turn of events for several seconds, grumbling and grinding his teeth. Dumitra said nothing as she dealt with the discomfort she felt in her eyes with soft moans and deep breaths. Shortly, a cellphone was heard vibrating from Razvan’s discarded suitcoat on the floor. After recognizing it was his phone, Razvan knelt and retrieved it. With some effort, he was able to see that the incoming call was from Lucian. He looked suspiciously at the cellphone in his hand for several seconds. Lucian had made three attempts to reach him over the past half-hour; he ignored those calls. He knew that Lucian was looking for Cristiãn, and he had no intention of telling him anything. But now the situation was different. Now he needed to know where Cristiãn was, and what he was doing. With this concern in mind, he completed the connection.
First, Razvan listened to Lucian’s question, then he ignored it in favor of what he wanted to say.
“He’s got her,” Razvan reported testily. “Cristiãn took Tremaine and he’s gone.”
Razvan listened to Lucian’s response.
“How the hell should I know?” Razvan returned with anger.
Once again there was a moment of silence as Razvan listened. Seconds later he responded with a mix of temper and desperation in his voice.
“Cristiãn and that girl must be found. We’re in this together now, Lucian. There’s no telling what Cristiãn might do to protect that mortal.”
Razvan went quiet as he listened to Lucian again.
“Call him,” Razvan asserted from this end of the call. “Promise him anything but stop him.”
Razvan listened with a growing look of fury but merely grumbled softly.
“So, what are you going to do?” Razvan queried angrily.
Razvan listened intently to Lucian’s response before blurting out another question.
“Where are you?”
The answer was brief as was Razvan’s reply.
“I’m coming.”
Razvan disconnected the call then began to ponder something that caused him to turn his attention to the floor. Dumitra picked up on his musing through their vampire bond. She moved in next to him, matching her mood to his. Tony could see that their eyesight had much improved—the irritant seeming to have lessened. They were extremely disheveled: dirty, tattered and scorched clothing; their hair an equal mess. Their faces were masks of burnt skin, dried blood and scar tissue. With their heads low, they fixed their attentions inwards.
After several seconds of silence, Tony felt emboldened enough to break they’re concentration.
“Okay, so what do we do now?” Tony asked with a frown. “This is your mess—your area of expertise. What’s going to happen and how do we fix it?”
Neither Razvan nor Dumitra bothered to look at Tony when he spoke. A few seconds after, they looked up at him, lifting their heads slightly with upturned eyes. They held their gaze upon him for several seconds as they considered their options. Then they looked to each other out of the corner of their eyes. They had come to a decision.
“Relax, Tony,” Razvan said wearily while moving toward him. “We’ll take care of it.”
Tony was slightly unnerved by Razvan’s presence directly in front of him. He inched back a little and hesitantly replied, “Okay.”
“We will fix this. I promise,” Razvan assured with a smile.
Tony tried to relax a little. Then suddenly, Razvan grabbed him by the arm, snatched him forward until they were chest-to-chest and bared his teeth with a growl. His canines were much larger than they were a few seconds earlier. They looked like fangs to Tony, and the sight of them terrified him. Dumitra hurried over to Tony with her fangs bared. Tony screamed as Razvan sank his teeth into his neck. A second later, Dumitra sunk hers into his inner wrist. It took a little more than a minute for them to drink him into unconsciousness and little more than five to drink him dead. When they had both taken their fill of him, Razvan placed his body in the freezer chest that he had secured for Cassidy. Before closing the lid, Razvan bit into the fleshy part of his hand and drained a small amount of his blood into Tony’s mouth.
~~~~~line break~~~~~
“Wait!” Cristiãn called out as he grabbed Cassidy’s arm and brought them both to a stop.
Cristiãn recognized the make, model and color of the car that just had turned onto the street as the same one that had picked him up at the garage.
“What is it?” Cassidy asked, confused and surprised.
Cristiãn saw that the two occupants of the car were the gunmen they had just escaped minutes earlier. He suspected they were there to kill Cassidy. He had no doubt that Razvan had given them that order. Cristiãn hoped that the moderately active community they were in, with its assortment of small retail stores, would deter Razvan’s mortal cohorts from attempting any acts of violence, but he seriously doubted that that would be the case.
“It’s them,” Cristiãn reported while holding his gaze on the car.
Cassidy noted the car that Cristiãn was looking at just as he tugged her away from the street. The four-story building next to them had a for sale banner attached to the front fire escape. The windows from the second story up were boarded over. The ground floor store fronts were covered by their role down metal shutters. Cristiãn hurried over to the building’s front door.
“We have to get off the street.”
Cristiãn tried the door of the building and discovered it was locked just as the Buick LaCrosse began speeding toward them. He immediately grabbed the doorknob with both hands and ripped it out of its housing. He then tossed the knob aside and opened the door.
The exertion it took to open the door nearly brought Cristiãn to his knees and caused his breathing to become labored. Cassidy grabbed him to give support and found him unusually warm to the touch. With her arm around his waist, she helped him through the doorway to the darkened staircase on the other side which disappeared into an equally dark second floor. Cristiãn stumbled to a stop at the foot of the stairs and dropped to one knee. With his free arm, he grabbed the railing to stop himself from going all the way down to the floor. Within seconds, they heard a car screech to a stop in front of the building.
“We’ve got to go up,” Cristiãn said as he pulled himself back up onto his feet and started to ascend the stairs.
Cassidy continued to assist him up the stairs. She thought his ascent was surprisingly swift considering how exhausted he was just moments earlier, but he nearly collapsed from exhaustion as they reached the top. When they heard someone at the door at the foot of the stairs, Cristiãn pulled her away from the light coming through door. They listened silently without moving for several seconds but heard no sound of movement at the door below. Cristiãn finally signaled with a hand gesture for Cassidy to follow him.
The landing on the second floor turned out into a hallway that went the length of the building. The windows, at either end of the hallway, were boarded over. Light seeping through the sides of the boards barely provided enough illumination for Cassidy to see as she moved through the hallway. The air was stale and moldy. There were only two apartments on that floor—one at either end. All the external and interior doors to the apartments had been removed.
Cristiãn led toward the front of the building and the next staircase as quietly as he could. Cassidy’s steps were hampered by low light and the debris strewn about the floor. When they reached the front end of the hall, they climbed the staircase to the third floor with as much stealth as possible. To Cassidy’s surprise, Cristiãn’s breathing was much improved. She had yet to understand that the darkness inside the building was providing him relief from the sunlight. Along with their slow and quiet movements, Cristiãn’s stamina began to improve.
As they climbed to the third floor, they still heard no sound from the ground floor. Cristiãn was more aware of the silence than Cassidy. His hearing was more acute than human ears could be. He knew there was one person at the ground floor landing of the stairwell; he or she had not started to ascend the stairs yet. When they reached the third floor, Cristiãn went back to the front of the building. The configuration and condition of the third floor was essentially identical to the second—only darker.
“Come-on,” Cristiãn whispered as he started to creep up the staircase to the fourth floor with Cassidy in tow.
Halfway up the staircase, Cristiãn heard the voices of two men floating up the stairwell. He could barely make out the question, “where are they?” He faintly heard part of the reply: “…a couple of floors.” When Cristiãn and Cassidy reached the fourth-floor landing, they made their way to the apartment at the rear of the building and then into the bedroom furthest from the apartment door.
