Vampire "Unleashed" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 3) (16 page)

Options. He had options. He could ignore it all and vanish. He could go into Brasov and check on Ildico, but that seemed an obvious trap; or he could call the telephone number and speak with these villains and negotiate. They wanted the money back from Switzerland, they could only get it if he was alive and compliant, so perhaps they were genuinely doing business. Return what you have and that is the end of it.

Three choices, all of them lousy.

But they had hurt Ildico. They had broken his disguise to uncover his identity.

Paul unbuttoned his left cuff and lifted his shirt sleeve. ‘Sublimation’, tattooed in block letters from elbow to his wrist. The reminder stained into his skin. Sublimation, for Ildico. Do it for her. Get better for her. Improve her life over your own… And then these fuckers rocked up and put a gun in her mouth? Did they rape her? Had they done sexual things to her? Would they do hurtful things in the future? Was she even still alive?

If she was alive, would they hurt her again?

Yes… They would hurt her for sure if they thought he responded to that.

Three options. Vanish, visit Ildico, or negotiate?

Were they the only options? Was there a fourth way? Could he turn it around and hurt them? They said they wanted the money back. This was the work of the remaining Gjokeja brother, it could only be him. The perpetrator was known. Option four. Head to Albania. Get to the surviving Gjokeja. Capture him. Torture him. Do whatever it takes to learn what is happening. Find out who are the masked men that attacked Ildico… and kill them all.

Option four. A good plan. Good because it put him on the move. Good because it created space. It would take a day of travel to get to Skhodra. A day to think things through. If it went wrong then at least he was out of harm’s way. He was out of Romania. It would give him time to think. He could perhaps even make himself visible in Skhodra, lay a false trail to distract attention away from Ildico.

He loaded his backpack for light travel, he pulled the tarp off the car and turned the ignition, hoping, praying it would start. The engine coughed a few times then sputtered to life, unhealthy but working. He revved the engine, letting it warm up, letting the battery charge and feeling the rumble of the engine. It would be better if he could have taken the bike but it was too small to be permitted on motorways. He would take it on faith that this rust bucket could make it to Albania. Then once there, he would raise unholy hell against these people.

----- X -----

He’d driven all night. The sun was rising above the horizon and dazzling through the windscreen. Paul pulled into a service station to escape the glare. Amongst the truck drivers, he blended in as a weary man making a long journey.

So much could go wrong here. Perhaps Gjokeja no longer lived in his compound. Perhaps he anticipated this move and was waiting for him to arrive. The risks didn’t seem to matter. These men had threatened Ildico and proved she would never be safe until he wrested control of the situation.

He took scrambled eggs and bacon and picked at it with a fork, his left elbow on the table, his hand supporting his head. He finished his breakfast and retreated to the car for rest.

Cars passed back and forth around him in the car park. Truck engines rumbled. The motorway was full of activity. He laid the seat as far back as it would go and with the sun rising, he took off his coat and pulled it over his head as a shield to the world.

“Who are you?” he mused. “Who are you that you would hurt her to get to me?”

He tried to summon Ildico. He wanted to see her to rebuild his strength, but all he saw were the photographs of her naked and bleeding. He felt her panic and fear. “Where are you, Ildico? Show yourself.” Again he tried to picture her, tried to will her into his imagination but saw nothing. He tried again. He pulled the coat tighter over his head to block out the light, the sounds of the motorway.

Nothing.

He remembered details. Her brown eyes, her milky white skin, but his imagination wouldn’t conjure her organically.

“Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare take her from me… I swear, if I can’t even think of her I’ll carve you with more pain than you can believe.”

He tried again, this time trying to make it easy on himself, imagining her at a distance. He tried to capture the image of her sitting in a chair with him looking at the back of her head. All he saw was a photographic image that slipped ahead as though it was coming out of a Polaroid camera, slowly developing before his eyes. She was covered in blood. The gun was in her mouth. Her eyes were wide in horror.

“Fuck you! FUCK YOU!” He pulled away the coat and punched his hand into the chair four times. “FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. I swear I’m going to kill you if you take her from me... I’ll kill them, Ildico. I promise you, these people are going to die for what they’ve done.”

He tried to rest without bringing her image to mind, but without her he was nothing. He was a shell. Without her he was the void in human form. Without her there was no reason to live.

He went back into the services and took a coffee. He focussed his thinking on practical matters. Logic. Analysis of the enemy.

“What motivates you, Gjokeja?” he whispered to himself. “The information on you from the laptop of Corneliu Latis claimed you make tens of millions every year. So why are you asking for the money back?” He returned to the car, still talking to himself. “You don’t want the money. You don’t need it. You’re interested in revenge.” He got into the vehicle and paused before starting the engine. “Revenge is a stupid game to play against me.”

Think… Is this a trap?

“Ildico,” he whispered, “I can’t see you anymore. I need your help and they’ve taken you from me.”

In his head he could see himself slicing the masked men with the karambit through their groins, across their eyes. He was going to make a mess. He couldn’t imagine Ildico, but he sure as hell could imagine what he was going to do to the ski-masked men who hurt her.

He stroked his left sleeve. He didn’t need to roll it up to know what the tattoo said. Get better, do it for her, make her life better and that makes everything better. Men had hurt her because he had given her a new life. He accepted that the responsibility was his. The consequences were for him to resolve also. The man in Albania was encouraging him to act, but he wasn’t forcing him. It was his choice and he made it resolutely. They would all die screaming.

----- X -----

The hillside above the Gjokeja compound looked barren in winter. There were a few pockets of snow, but the scrubland had changed from dusty and brown to grey and damp. He got out of the car in the exact spot as where he’d taken the banker, Alek Dukanovic.

Strange that he should have come back.

The Gjokeja compound had been reinforced since his attack. There was razor wire atop the perimeter wall, visible security cameras and powerful lights as though the compound had transformed into a prisoner of war camp.

He might need tools. A ladder to scale the wall, cutters to get through the wire. Without tools the only access would be to scale the front gates.

A man came into view, tall with wide shoulders, thick black hair and a full beard. He was smoking a cigarette, shifting his weight from one foot to another and pacing aimlessly. He looked like a bear. He finished his cigarette, leaned his arm through the bars of the gate and flicked his cigarette butt to the side before vanishing.

Paul hid himself between rocks and trees and kept an eye on the front gate.

He waited.

After an hour The Bear reappeared with another man, thin with very white skin and a shiny bald head, he could have been albino his head was so white. They both smoked until a car approached then tossed their cigarettes aside in unison. The gates opened. A man in a silvery grey suit got out and the albino got in. The car drove away.

“That was the changing of the guard,” Paul whispered to himself. “One came and one went. But how many are there? How many men?”

It began to rain. Only a light drizzle but Paul knew if he stayed outside the elements would slowly take their toll. He returned to his car to wait until nightfall. He rocked the seat back and closed his eyes. “When I go inside this place,” he said in mental preparation. “I will talk to those guards, I will interrogate them.”

He waited.

Patiently.

He waited until eleven in the evening.

There was no movement from the compound, no cars arriving or leaving. No lights at this time of night. The compound looked dead.

“Ildico, give me strength for what I’m about to do.”

He approached from the front, sticking to the wall, sliding around to the entrance gates until he was looking through the bars into the compound. It looked deserted and he began climbing the ironwork, getting to the top and swinging one leg over. Then a door opened and a man came straight towards him. It was The Bear. He looked up at Paul. Paul looked back. For a few seconds they stared at one another in silence then the guard casually put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a gun.

He was lazy.

There was no stress or tension to the man’s nervous system, no yellow lines careening through his muscles and nerves. Sitting on top of the gate, Paul raised his hands in surrender. The Bear said a few words in Albanian, his timbre matching his appearance. He beckoned Paul down with a hooked finger.

Paul feigned compliance and turned his back on the man to climb down. He took a moment before reaching the bottom to assess his surroundings, to sense the exact position and manner of the gunman. Then as he stepped off the gate he unfastened the karambit from the holster inside his coat. He spun with incredible speed, his left hand pushing the gun to the side, the karambit flashing in to slice the man’s wrist. The cut was massive. The gun was pointing away. There came a rush of electrical energy cascading from The Bear’s shoulder as yellow lines, the tendons and nerves firing as he tried to pull the trigger. Paul yanked the karambit back across the crook of the elbow, going for the tendons and muscle before the trigger could be pulled, then a solid strike against his assailants neck.

The Bear didn’t know what hit him. Three strikes, pah-pah-pah, in less than a second and Paul still had the wherewithal to snatch the weapon out of his hand.

The guard stumbled backwards, gripping the wound to his arm, then fell onto his back whilst blood squirted from his neck. He died without making a sound.

Paul examined the gun. He’d never fired a gun before. He’d never even held one but he’d seen enough movies to understand the general operation. He put it in his pocket to examine later.

The door from where The Bear had emerged was open and Paul looked inside. It was a guard station with two computer monitors showing the live feed from eight cameras across the compound. Infrared cameras showing the gate. The Bear would have seen him the moment he started climbing.

There was movement on a monitor, the man in the silver suit was by the pool and heading for the tennis courts.

He ran lightly on tip toes, through beautifully made pathways of cracked stone and flower beds. He ran along the side of the pool and saw the guard crossing the tennis court. Paul ran silently behind him and hissed, “Hey!”

The man turned, startled, shocked to find Paul slicing through his neck in a noose attack.

Silver Suit pulled backwards and fell. He rolled onto his knees and managed to pull a gun of his own from a hidden holster but he lost consciousness face down on the tennis court within seconds. Massive trauma, non-survivable blood loss. The blood pooled around the man, his gun resting under his limp hand.

“Aw, fuck!” Paul whispered. He wanted to ask questions… He forgot.

Now what?

He took stock of his surroundings and headed for the main home, entering through a patio. The lights were dimmed but working, shining through a thousand crystals of a chandelier. He was in a stretched sitting room of marble floor and golden wallpapers. Fresh flowers stood on pedestals, a long dining table with ornate chairs, a harp in the corner with sheet music on a stand.

Paul stepped into the room and walked to the plate window. He’d seen it from the other side and had always known the view would be fabulous. Plush brown sofas formed a horseshoe of seats around a coffee table looking down onto the Lake Skhodra. Everything was luxurious. Everything cost a fortune.

A noise…

Voices.

A snap sound and a man’s snorted laugh.

He followed. There was a door at the end of the corridor. A man and woman were in there. What to do? Should he use the gun? Go in with a gun to threaten?

He moved his ear as close to the door as he could without touching the wood. There was talking. The crack sound came again and with it a woman panting a sexualized breath. The speech was mumbled.

Paul unhooked the karambit, noticing for the first time that he had some flecks of blood on his hands. Then he took a deep breath, opened the door and walked right in.

----- X -----

The naked old man was suspended in a medical lift. He was thin, with matchstick legs, held upright by white leather straps under his arms that were attached to a supporting frame with a winch. It was the sort of device used to hoist the disabled in and out of a bathtub, but here it was holding the old man in a standing position.

Fixed against the old man’s leg was a plastic bag to collect piss from a catheter in his walnut sized penis. Paul was looking at an old wrinkled man, held up by a medical device with a tube in his cock. There were scars to his face and chest.

On the bed was what he thought was an inflatable sex doll. Massive fake tits, plump red lips, white fishnet stockings, sitting on her haunches with her hands tucked beneath her ass. There was a gold chain hanging between clamps pinched to her nipples. It was only when her head moved he realised she was a living person.

The old man raised a bamboo cane ahead of himself like it was a sword. He cried out with a broken voice, swished the cane in defence and accidentally clipped the girl in the head.

Paul pointed at him with his knife. “Aldo Gjokeja,” he said with an exaggeration to his gravelled voice. “You and I are going to talk.”