He pulled up the sleeve of his dress shirt and motioned Vadim to his exposed wrist. Two handed sword slung over his shoulder, the big vampire dropped gracefully to his knees and reverently brought Fedor’s wrist to his mouth. My kernel of hope was collapsing under despair. Anton and Fedor both raised their heads and a moment later my slightly less sensitive ears picked up the sound something rushing over hollow metal.
“She’s here! Much sooner than we expected,” Fedor said. He yanked his wrist from Vadim’s clutch, and pointed to the doorway. “Get out there now!”
Vadim vanished in a rush of air and Fedor turned to me, his eyes expectant. I tried pooling my aura, but the results were weaker than I had hoped for. Still, it was all I had to work with, so I prepared to use it as best I could.
“She’s just gonna run over the top of the containers and avoid all your pets,” I said.
“These steel shipping boxes are stacked five and six deep, with an unusual cross stack pattern. She has no choice but to approach on our terms,” Fedor said.
He turned to Anton and issued orders. “Get out there and control those mutants of yours.” The dapper vampire left in blur. The papers that had floated up when Vadim left were still swirling in a mini tornado, behind Fedor. It expanded in size and the kernel of hope flared back.
“Now then, you’ve had enough time to distract me. Or didn’t you think I was aware you were trying to get me talking?” he said.
“It’s called monologuing, and of course I was trying to get you to do it. That would give my rescuers a chance to get here in time.”
His smile was pure malice. “I’m afraid none of your fans will make it in time, as I’m tired of waiting and frankly, you smell delicious.” He started in my direction.
At that moment the front of the box suddenly disappeared in a shriek of twisted steel.
“Actually I think one of them is already here,” I said.
The container door and much of the surrounding metal was gone, torn away like tissue paper. But nothing was there, just a pile of shredded metal and a broken light pole, the still shining bulb swinging in the eerie quiet. I never saw Fedor turn around, he was just suddenly facing the empty space outside the container. When nothing happened, he took a slow predatory step forward. I tried my Sight again, and was rewarded with the giant green, red and purple form of Okwari just as he slammed his two dinner platter sized paws together on Fedor’s torso. I have no way of telling for sure how much power was involved, but I’m guessing it had to be similar to two thirty millimeter cannon shells slamming together head on. Fedor did a remarkable impersonation of a caterpillar being crushed under a bike tire. Blood, brains and gore spattered the ceiling, the floor and me.
Vampires are reported to be hard to kill, particularly the old ones. However, when the crushed husk that had been Fedor fell over, I had absolutely no doubt he was dead and gone. I would have liked to wipe the gore from my face, but my arms were still secured behind my back. “Thank you Okwari,” I said to the not-so-empty space in front of me. In fact the air was blurry across most of the opening. A mental image of me pulling his collar off and of me stepping in front of Lydia flashed through my head.
“Yes, we certainly are friends.” I responded to the theme of the message. “You don't know anything about handcuffs do you?” I asked, wistfully.
A picture of me turning around to present my secured arms popped into my mind. Doing as told and hoping for the best, I spun in place and held my arms as far from my body as possible. A talon that felt the size of a banana gently moved between my arms and with an effortless motion parted the handcuff links.
“Thank you again. Now I have to find my mate and help her,” I said, using my Sight to see him.
He woofed in agreement then backed out of the opening and swung his whiskey barrel sized head to look in the direction of the fighting noises, which had suddenly started.
The corridors formed by the seemingly haphazard placement of containers were long, dark and confining. Just as they had been intended to be. I raced down the one leading in the direction of the fight, pausing just long enough to snap the head off a heavy duty broom I found, giving me a weapon. The ground shook behind me as more than a ton of prehistoric spirit bear followed me. I didn't know if Okwari would fight alongside of me or not, but just his massive presence would be a boon. Invisible or not, the acute senses of the vampires would make them aware that something was in their midst. The sounds of close quarters combat grew louder as I ran through the tunnels and alleys formed by the stacked shipping containers. Rounding a lefthand turn, I found myself at one end of a large corridor, the other end full of screaming Hancers. Vadim and Anton stood with their backs to me, watching a blurry form in black leather spin glittering blades of steel through the closely packed addicts like a weed wacker through crabgrass. Body parts were flying everywhere and after a brief glance in my direction, Vadim flowed forward to meet Tatiana's arrival.
His giant two handed sword met her smaller pair of blades in a crash of metal and the real fight began in earnest. Anton grimaced in shock at the blood covered sight of me, torn between the urge to attack and the need to flee from whatever had befallen his much more powerful Elder. I sensed Okwari sliding around the corner behind me and his impact into the closest shipping container made enough noise to pause the fighting for a microsecond. If the sound wasn't enough, the car sized dent that magically buckled into the side of the container was more than sufficient to convince Anton that he needed to be elsewhere fast. The slick vampire darted up the corridor, keeping as far away from Vadim and Tatiana as possible, his finely shod feet dancing over top the blood soaked mess that had been twenty or thirty people a few seconds before. I wasn't sure how best to help Tatiana without distracting her, but before I could come to a decision; she skipped back a few steps to gain room and paused to look in my direction. Her rimless black eyes locked onto my gore covered form and I could literally feel the rage that flowed from her. She thought the blood was mine!
My enhanced vision had let me see some of the blows that she and Vadim had traded in the first exchange, but her next attack was too fast to process. Whatever edge that eight centuries of practice and the blood of an Elder had given Vadim in the first round, evaporated in the heat of Tatiana's fury. As best I could tell, she met him head on, trading him blow for blow, her enraged strength stopping his much heavier sword dead. To his credit, faced with more than he had envisioned, Vadim fought with everything he had. It wasn't enough. The finish came so quickly, if I had blinked I would have missed it. One moment it was head to head, like steel meeting iron. Then she suddenly folded away from a blow and was past him. He started to turn to face her but his right leg, from the thigh down, stayed where it was. He fell over, part way around. His left arm shot down, arresting his fall, in a move that would have been incredible, except for the fact that Tatiana was suddenly standing back in her starting position and Vadim's big gleaming bald head was sliding free from his neck. His body stayed in a grotesque side lean, blood spraying from the stump of neck and leg in opposite arcs. Then it collapsed into the dirt. My view of his carcass was suddenly eclipsed by a pair of rimless black eyes framed with raven hair, as Tatiana stood in front of me, searching for the massive wounds that had covered me in blood. Her nostrils flared, telling her the truth, at the same moment I spoke. “This isn't mine. It's Fedor's.” Small blue specks appeared in the center of her eyes, swiftly replacing the coal black. She looked confused.